Blame it on the Brain
by coldangel omega
Summary: Years have passed since Fry defeated the evil Brainspawn, and his forgotten heroism remains a blank page in history. However, the Universe will soon face a new menace. Old enemies are astir. And Fry, the Mighty One, must step forward one last time...
1. Prologue

Prologue: In space, no one can hear you make an idiot of yourself…

The middle of an infinite nowhere. A two-kilometre long technological monolith hung suspended in interstellar space, holding silent vigil as its arrays of esoteric sensors probed the varied spectrums of electromagnetic and quantum backwash that suffused the vacuum. The vessel, bearing the name _SS Brezhnev_, was a research and exploration ship of the kind that trawled the galaxy for years at a time, measuring and recording anything of potential profit to the commercial matriarch whose stylized image was stencilled onto the gargantuan hull.

Professor Ogden Wernstrom pored over readouts in the ship's command centre, furrowing his brow and tapping the side of his aristocratic nose.

"Mmm," the old scientist grunted in derision at the Universe's reticence to divulge its secrets. "It certainly is puzzling," he said to himself. "Obviously not so puzzling that someone of my vast intelligence would be unable to solve it… but a mystery for now." He thought he saw one of his Asian assistants roll her eyes, and he cast a sharp glance in her direction.

"I… er," the woman stammered. "I've measured residual gravitronic effects in the nearby nebula which seem to support the hypothesis that a large mass was at one point present at these coordinates," she said. "Lack of any matter aside from a localized field of antiprotons undergoing gradual dispersal would indicate that the mass, whatever it was, was utterly annihilated some years ago."

"Not annihilated, you fool!" Wernstrom spat. "I give you an A-triple-minus for that botched analysis! The antiprotons are flushback from a superstring state conversion. Whatever was here was interfaced entirely in a quantum field which subsequently cancelled-out of this dimensional plane. Whatever was here was banished to another dimension – intentionally, because this 'quantum interface bomb' was no natural phenomenon… but why?"

"Because it was dangerous?" one of the younger scientists offered.

"Thank you for pointing out the abundantly obvious," Wernstrom sneered. "Whatever was transported from this dimensional plane must have been of great power to warrant such a deliberate and total banishment… something Momcorp could use to great advantage, while I go on to win another Nobel prize."

"Uh…" the young scientist raised a trembling index finger. "Perhaps… perhaps whatever this thing is… maybe it was sent away for a good reason."

Wernstrom rounded on the naysayer, narrowing his crinkled eyes in contempt. "What's your point, child?" he snapped.

"Well… maybe we should… play it safe and leave the thing where it is."

"Play it safe?" Wernstrom repeated in disgust. "How many scientific breakthroughs were made by 'playing it safe'?" He pointed at the youngster with a bony finger. "Get off my command deck – you're fired."

As the scientist slumped sadly away, the rest of the research team seemed suddenly more eager to please.

"Professor Wernstrom, we have the Q-tunnelling array powered up down in the isolation module," one of them said. "It shouldn't take too long to calibrate the quark-accelerator and U-space folding hardware to match the residual signature of the event – we should be able to send through a probe within the hour."

"Do it," Wernstrom said, peering out through the forward viewscreen at the mysterious area of empty space. "I want to know what happened here."

Deep in the bowels of the research ship, the containment section was filled with bulky particle-physics hardware that didn't officially exist. Wernstrom and his team watched through a sheet of heavily-reinforced transparent titanium alloy as crackling vermillion energies licked and spat between superconductor pylons inside the armoured spherical chamber.

"Even with both the antimatter and fusion reactors operating at full capacity, we still only have enough power to sustain a wormhole for around forty seconds – and it will be small and weak," Wernstrom said. "But nevertheless, it should suffice. _Brezhnev_, are we cleared to proceed?"

"Yes Professor," the ship's AI said through the intercom. "Though I would suggest caution in this matter."

Wernstrom sniffed. "That's why Artificial Intelligences aren't a substitute for real intelligence."

The headless body of Agnew toggled a control, and hard-edged light flared inside the isolation module. It dimmed to a point of glaring iridescence poised in the air between the spires of machinery, which then crackled and expanded into a rippling sphere that wavered and then seemed to solidify, a metre in diameter.

"Wormhole is stable," a technician reported as he consulted the readouts.

"Launch the probe," Wernstrom instructed, watching the wormhole with rapt fascination. From the curved ceiling above, a robotic arm lowered a sensor-encrusted Sputnik into position next to the seething sphere of exotic energy. Chemical verniers fired, and the probe shot forward, jumping towards the wormhole's event horizon where it…

…jerked to a halt and bounced away, clattering across the tangles of cable on the deck.

"What the hell?!" Wernstrom spat, staring in confounded irritation at the wormhole. As he watched, he realized what had stopped the probe going through – an object was coming through the other way. Movement pulled at the edges of the wormhole, distorted bulges squeezing at the event horizon – a shifting, indistinguishable mass was apparent behind the energy curtain, and for the first time Wernstrom felt a pang of fear.

"Bring the containment field up to full-power and activate the defence grid," he said, distantly aware of the automated railgun batteries swinging into position.

The wormhole fluxed and burst fourth an object which sailed into the containment pod, bouncing back and fourth. The flash of energy discharge from the now-collapsing wormhole obscured the room, and the science team leaned forward expectantly to catch a glimpse of what was inside.

Abruptly, the power failed, and they were plunged into momentary darkness while the energy-drain deficit was equalized. The wormhole had ceased to exist.

When the lights came back on, Wernstrom and the team gasped in horrified wonder.

"What kind of…"

"Is that what it looks like?"

"Can this be…?"

A large pink blob hovered on the other side of the transparent partition, its surface puckered and ridged, and still carrying some faint luminescence from the trans-dimensional energy. It was a brain. A huge floating brain, which seemed to regard the scientists, despite the lack of any obvious eyes.

"Duh, we should let it out and see what it tastes like!" one of the young scientists suggested, clapping his hands stupidly.

Wernstrom opened his mouth, closed it, blinked several times, and shook his head. What bothered him more than the idiocy of the comment was his sudden inability to find any logical fault with it. Maybe if they ate the brain they could gain its knowledge…

"What?" he said aloud, wondering where the ridiculous thought had come from. He watched one of his assistants bang her head against the transparent partition in apparent puzzlement as to how a solid wall could be in front of her and not be visible… which seemed like a good question…

"Heh heh… my name is Ogden," he heard himself blurt, and then grinned widely. "Og-den… Og den… Ogden… how weird is that?"

"This isn't MY hand!" one of the scientists shouted in terror, clutching at his own wrist and staring at his hand in mortification.

"Evolution is a myth," another of the team muttered. "God created us as we are."

"This ship would go faster if we painted it red…"

"How many 7's are there in 'science'?"

The ship's AI spoke over the intercom: "All personnel are advised that life support will now be rationed to preserve stores – please inhale only once every twelve hours."

Wernstrom squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drive away the wild impulse to climb up on the pipe structure that lined the bulkhead. "Something… not right… is… banana…" he struggled. "Brain… make people… monkey… stupid…"

"I can't lick my elbow!" one of the team complained in anguish.

"I'll do it for you… no!" Wernstrom gritted his teeth, and looked at the brain that hovered motionless inside the containment chamber. "Must… have to… stop… stupidification…"

"We all live in a yellow submarine!" the ship's AI sang drunkenly.

Wernstrom stumbled over to the containment module's control console and giggled at the colourful buttons. He punched a few at random, and when they did nothing he began sulking, putting one thumb in his mouth.

Agnew tried to walk up the wall and fell flat on his back while the others laughed. Wernstrom tried hard to focus, glaring down at the control console. Like the shadow of a distant memory, some knowledge flitted just out of reach. One button had a symbol on it that looked like a pair of lightning bolts. Wernstrom cocked his head to one side, trying to remember why he wanted to push the button, then shrugged and pushed it anyway.

Suddenly, the interior of the containment chamber was filled with crackling bolts of electricity that swam sparking across every surface. The alien brain convulsed and flew wildly from side to side and hundreds of thousands of volts shot through it. When the defense grid discharge ceased, it fell smoking to the deck.

Coming slowly back to his senses, Wernstrom surveyed the scene inside the chamber, and glanced at his groggy assistants.

"What happened?" he asked. There was no answer. Swallowing hard, he formulated some orders. "Put together a bio-quarantine team," he said weakly. "Check if that thing is still alive… then sedate it if it is."

Inside the containment module, the brain twitched and pulsed.


	2. Chapter 1

**Futurama: Blame it on the Brain**

By coldangel1

Caption: '_Featuring over 400,000 hours of bonus material!'_

Chapter 1: Pandora's Sack.

"_The Brainspawn… devourers of thought. A millisecond after the Big Bang, they came into existence as the equal and opposite component to sentient life. __Their eons-long goal is to destroy all other intelligence after absorbing the accrued knowledge of the Universe._

_They almost succeeded too. Many battles were fought – my people and I, the fearsome Nibblonian race, were pitted against the Brainspawn, but at the end of all things there could be only one being with the power to defeat the evil calamity._

_When the chosen day came, it was he, the Mighty One, who faced the great enemy, and smote them from existence._

_And then… the fighting ceased. The Universe, it seemed, was safe._

_But the price of liberty is eternal vigilance – and so I wait, always poised and prepared should the enemy return; for if that day does come, we will be beyond the foretelling of prophesy… and all bets will be off."_

* * *

The object had stumped the greatest human minds for more than a millennium, proving time and time again to be the single most insurmountable conundrum ever conceived. 

"…Until now," Philip J. Fry said aloud as he held the Rubik's Cube at arm's length and triumphantly turned the top section to form one solid blue side. "Ta-daaaa!" he exclaimed to the empty room. "I did it! After thousand years and a million sick days, I finally did it!" He turned the cube around and let out a low groan – now three other sides were out of alignment.

"Dammit!" he spat, tossing the cube onto a pile of junk. "Every time I do something great it turns out not to be so great… or someone else did it first… or I dreamed it… or saw it in a movie while drunk."

A sharp rapping at the outer door to his closet apartment broke his self-pitying reverie, and he hauled himself to his feet and padded barefoot to the entrance. Bender's cavity was empty – the robot having departed earlier in the day for some 'secret pillaging business'. As Fry opened the door his face lit up when he saw who was waiting outside.

"Leela!" he exclaimed. "You're here! I…" He stopped abruptly and reasserted himself into a cool affectation, leaning casually on the doorframe. "So, what brings you to my neighbourhood, pretty lady?" he drawled, pulling off a fairly suave persona for a man dressed only in his underpants.

"Nice, Fry." Truanga Leela rolled her single eye. "You forgot you were going to mind Nibbler for me for a few days."

"Oh right!" Fry said, glancing down at the three-eyed creature Leela held on a leash. "You have that thing…"

"Starship licence certification course," Leela said with an expressive sigh. "Never mind that I've been piloting perfectly well for years without one; now suddenly Planet Express won't be allowed to do business unless I have the stupid licence."

"Ah, you'll pass it easily," Fry said, taking Nibbler's leash. "You're the best pilot I've ever flown with – and I've flown with five!"

"Thanks Fry, but right now I'm just bummed about having to spend two days at the stupid flight academy on stupid Mars with a bunch of stupid cadets... Anyhow, make sure you feed Nibbler eight times a day." Leela knelt down and rubbed the alien creature's head. "You be a good little cutie baby boy while I'm away," she said as Nibbler made a contented keening sound.

"I will," Fry replied.

Leela narrowed her eye and turned to stalk off down the hallway.

"Have a safe trip," Fry called out.

* * *

Three men occupied a dingy room directly across the street from the Robot Arms apartment block. All dressed in matching double-breasted black uniforms, they clustered together around the single window – the oldest of the three with a high-powered image-intensifier array held to his eyes.

"So, they _are_ connected," Walt said to himself.

"Yes, they are," Larry seconded, and then paused for thought. "…To what?" he asked.

"Idiot! Walt snapped, slapping the middle brother. "The Nibblonian and the so-called 'Mighty One'. The creature's keeper brought it right to Philip Fry's home. We can now kill two birds with one burlap sack."

"Can I play with the binoculars now?" Ignar, the youngest, asked excitedly, reaching for the array.

"No! Get your damn hands off it, you slime!" Walt growled, slapping Ignar. He looked through the array again and was pleased to note the cyclops woman departing the building without the Nibblonian in tow.

"Walt," Larry began uncertainly, "...if that red-haired man is so important, don't you think it an odd coincidence that we've come across him so many unrelated times before?"

"I don't call it coincidence," Walt said. "I call it cosmic providence."

"Ahahaha-hahaha! Ahahah…. hah haha….. ha?" Ignar trailed off, looking at the other two as they glared at him. "I thought it was a joke," he explained sheepishly, and received a slap from both of his brothers.

"Let's get to work," Walt said.

* * *

Fry had found his jeans and T-shirt, and was preparing to head off to the Pizza plaza to scrounge up some food for himself and Nibbler, when the little alien suddenly began jabbering anxiously and hopping around at his feet.

"Wassamatta-you?" he said, making a grab at the critter and missing. "You miss your momma already? Don't worry, she'll be…" He trailed off, noticing Nibbler's three eyes were fixed on the door, and the creature had bared its fangs. Underneath the door, in the gap between it and the shabby carpet, there was a shadow.

"Oh, it's just Bender," Fry said. "Don't worry about him – he won't hurt you… this time." Fry looked to the door expectantly – the shadow remained where it was and the door stayed closed. "Bender?" Fry said uncertainly, moving toward the entrance despite Nibbler's gibbering warning.

The faint scent of semtex epoxy reached his nostrils too late, and the door suddenly blasted inwards off its hinges in a cloud of smoke and shredded steel. It struck him and bore him to the ground where he lay pinned and breathless.

"What the hell…?" he mumbled, then let out an explosive 'ooph' as booted feet stomped over the door that rested across his body.

"Look! It's the Nibblonian – get it!" he heard a muffled voice shout.

"Dammit, little thing's faster than it looks!"

"Awww! Walt, it bit me! Am I going to die?"

"Hopefully, now shut up."

Fry groaned and heaved the door up off him. It fell back down and hit him in the forehead, dazing him momentarily before he wriggled out from underneath, struggled unsteadily to his feet and surveyed the apartment. Three men in black uniforms and balaclavas were poised around the room, staring at him.

"You guys again?" Fry growled angrily. "I already told you people I returned that video a thousand years ago! I'm not paying the charge."

"…What?" one of the masked figures grunted.

"It was a terrible movie anyway," Fry went on undaunted, "a grievous and unforgivable disappointment. It wasn't a sequel to the original 1980 hit, but rather a re-enactment! And a poorly executed one at that. More a series of lavish production numbers strung together by long stretches of lame dialogue and ridiculous subplots. It might have worked better as a concert documentary. As a sequel, it was a feeble mess. I give it one and a half stars."

"Out of five, or out of ten?" one of the figures asked.

"Quiet!" the largest of the three snapped, cuffing the other one around the head. "We're not here about any 'video'… whatever that is. We're here for you, Philip Fry… and THIS!" The man reached down and deftly caught Nibbler by the stalk of his third eye as the little alien tried to scurry past. A burlap sack was held open by one of the trio and Nibbler was thrown inside.

"Hey! You leave him alone!" Fry shouted, stepping forward and balling his fists.

"Look, the dullard's going to put up a fight," the leader of the three remarked condescendingly.

"Damn right I am," Fry replied. "'Cause if anything happens to Nibbler, his owner will kill us all."

"He doesn't realize," the medium-sized man mumbled through his balaclava. "He thinks the Nibblonian is just an animal; that he has to protect it, instead of the other way around."

"I… huh?" Fry raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Enough talk," the large man said, producing a nervejam stunner and levelling it at Fry.

Acting without thinking was something Fry was more than proficient in, and now he used that skill to its greatest effect, lunging forward and grabbing at the pistol-like device. His hands closed around the shooter's wrist as he pulled the trigger. The EM pulse lanced into Fry's chest and traversed his nervous system, stunning the receptors into a temporary dormant state. It also flowed through the skin contact he made with the shooter, spreading into the other man's body as well.

Both men fell limply to the ground, and all was silent for a moment but for the excited chirping of Nibbler in his sack.

Larry and Ignar peeled off their balaclavas and glanced at each other in bewildered indecision before kneeling beside their fallen brother.

"Walt?" Larry said, prodding at the unmoving body. "Walt – wake up! We need to leave before the police arrive… Walt?"

"Is he dead?" Ignar whined fearfully, chewing his nails.

"No, you idiot!" Larry cast a furious glance at Fry, who lay face-down on the carpet nearby. "We need to carry them both out of here, come on – help me…"

"What manner of unholy travesty doth transpire inth mine hometh?!" A loud voice bellowed, and Larry and Ignar spun around to see a silver Bending Unit standing in the apartment's entrance cavity, coil arms and manipulator claws held akimbo.

"Who are you?" Larry moaned in frustration.

"Who am I?" Bender took in the scene, saw his friend lying unconscious and the discarded balaclavas on the floor. "You good-for-nothing meatbag jerks can call me -- _**Bender the Offender**_! I'm gonna teach you – nobody hurts my friends except me!"

With that, Bender lunged forward, arms swinging in wild arcs, and Larry and Ignar moved backward in fear.

"Ahhh! Mom isn't going to be happy with us, is she Larry?" Ignar wailed.

"Oh shut up, you coward, or I'll…" Larry was silenced by one of Bender's hands slamming into his face with a clang. He fell backwards with blood streaming from a gash in his cheek. Ignar followed – folding in half and collapsing from a robotic fist to his stomach.

"Have at you!" Bender shouted as he savagely beat the intruders. "I shall smite thee!"

On the floor, Walt groaned and rolled woodenly onto his side, observing the brutal robot-on-human scrap that was taking place. He bared his teeth, fighting back the searing headache and waves of nausea from the nervejam stun, and fixed on the weapon lying nearby. As he reached for it, a grimy bare foot shot out and sent the gun skittering away.

"What do you want with Nibbler?" Fry said groggily, struggling to get to his feet.

"You have no idea how important he is… or how important you are," Walt mumbled, aiming a kick at Fry's solar plexus and missing.

"What are you talking about?" Fry demanded. Both of them wobbled unsteadily to their feet and faced each other. Larry and Ignar were still being pummelled somewhere behind.

"I don't have time to give you the introductory speech, you buffoon," Walt growled, reaching inside his suit to pull out a harmonic switchblade that unfolded with a click and began to resonate at high frequency. "I was sent to collect you whole, but really all we need is your brain."

Fry gasped. "But that's where I keep my recollections of naked Leela!" he said, backing away.

Walt rolled his eyes and advanced on Fry, but suddenly the discarded burlap sack containing Nibbler bounced across the floor, fangs protruding through the coarse fabric, and latched onto Walt's ankle. The man screamed in pain, and hopped around trying to dislodge the creature from his leg, giving Fry a chance to lunge forward and tackle him.

Both men slammed into the wide bay window overlooking the city, and Nibbler rolled away in his sack, dazed by the impact. Walt's flailing knife arm struck the reinforced glass and the harmonic blade parted its molecules, making the entire pane resonate energetically and shatter into a hail of tiny crystals. They both teetered suddenly on the edge of an abyss, with the street far below. Walt let go of the knife and scrabbled to hold onto Fry's shirt. As Fry tried to back away, the other man slipped on the glass and toppled backwards, pulling Fry with him. With a shout, he was dragged down flat to the floor, with his upper body protruding from the shattered window high above the street and the weight of a grown man pulling on him.

Fry grabbed Walt's arms as the fabric of his shirt began to tear.

"Don't let go! Don't let me fall!" Walt wailed, kicking his legs in a desperate attempt to find purchase against the building's sheer side.

"I won't," Fry said through gritted teeth, even as he felt his legs begin to slide. "Just stop moving…"

"Fry?" Bender paused, noticing his friend's peril. "Hold on buddy, I'm coming!"

"If you let me fall, you'll pay dearly!" Walt screamed, his fingernails digging into Fry's wrists.

"I'm not going to!" Fry snapped. "Just stop squirming or we'll both…" His hips slid over the edge, and with no counterbalance he began to slide into open space, with Walt screaming in terror.

Bender reached the window, diving through the air to make a grab at Fry's feet…

By 4.7 micrometres, he missed.

* * *

Deep space. The _SS Brezhnev_ maintained its position while the much-expanded and now specialized tech team worked endless shifts around the clock. Probing, analysing; learning everything that could be learned.

The Brainspawn that had been summoned through the dimensional wormhole was contained now, dormant within a cryonic holding cube, itself encased within an EM lattice.

Though it remained inactive, the creature still had a lot to teach – with nano-filaments extending into the holding unit and spreading themselves sinuously through the alien brain's tissue, Wernstrom and his team were able to systematically interrogate sections of its mind independently, gleaning all knowledge that could be separated from the mostly-indecipherable quagmire and assembling it within the ship's AI. Hints of the Brainspawn species' history and terrifying intent, their capabilities and musical tastes; all these things Wernstrom reported to Mom – her hologram standing impassively on the bridge console while he droned on.

At length, the Mom hologram waved its hand dismissively. "Enough flimflam, Wernstrom," she said. "If I wanted to learn science I wouldn't have hired scientists to do it for me. Just give me the basics – do you know yet how it manages to effect people's minds?"

"Not yet, no – but we've barely begun to scratch the surface," Wernstrom said. "This creature's knowledge of the Universe is beyond any known database."

"I don't want to know about the Universe," Mom snapped. "I don't pay you for starry-eyed star-struck stargazing, you sack of crap – I want control of whatever mechanism that thing uses to make people stupider. Control of that kind of power could make someone ruler of the world!"

"'Someone'?" Wernstrom repeated dubiously.

"What do you care? You'll get your science prize and I'll get my stupidifying ray. Everyone wins."

Wernstrom shrugged. "Fine. But to test the Brainspawn's higher functions I'll need to raise its temperature. There could be danger involved."

"Count the ways I gave a damn."

"And what of the Nibblonians, and the Mighty One the creature's mind revealed to us?"

"They're being acquired as we speak," Mom replied.

"Oh good," Wernstrom said. "I should dearly like to examine them."

Mom's hologram blinked out.

Wernstrom turned away and strode off toward the corridor, addressing the ship's AI as he walked. "Brezhnev, elevate the specimen's temperature by two degrees; we're stepping up our test sequence in the quest for profit."

"Is that wise, Professor?" the ship replied with an electronic emulation of dubiousness.

"Everything I say is wise," Wernstrom replied.

* * *

Down in the bowels of the vessel, the captive Brainspawn returned slowly to a reduced level of consciousness. In the cold and the dark, it could sense nothing outside of itself, and the absence of thought came as an unexpected relief. For the first time in its existence it felt alone, separated from the shrieks of other minds, and the aspirations of its peers from whom it was now separate – a dimension apart, entirely independent.

_Free._

The thought was a curious one, and the Brainspawn mulled on it for in indeterminate time. So bemused by the notion, it almost failed to notice the quite probing of primitive electronic pulses throughout its cold and slowly-functioning mind. A rudimentary self-scan showed a fibrous network of thin filaments stretching through its tissue like a spiderweb, questing and violating.

_So. Captured by humans who seek to glean my secrets?_

Feeling more amused, the Brainspawn began to generate pulses to send back along the nano-filaments in long strings of esoteric code. The nanomachines themselves began to change subtly, bending to the alien will. The Brainspawn could now think of itself as 'I', an individual rather than a component in a collective, and alone it could ill afford not to put every resource to use.

While the humans probed it with their machines – it would use their machines against them…


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Spawnography

"Fry!" Bender shouted in desperation, grabbing at empty air. With an electronic analogue of horror, he watched his friend and the other man fall away and down, plummeting toward the street far below with their shouts of terror entwined.

Bloody and bruised, Larry and Ignar stared at each other aghast. Larry quickly grabbed the sack containing Nibbler and pulled his younger brother with him toward the door. Bender didn't see them leave.

Fry tumbled end-over-end for an eternity before halting with a sickening wet crunch of shattering bones. He lay dazed for a moment, staring up at the sky, before shifting and climbing unsteadily off Walt's corpse.

The older man had hit the pavement first, making a warm bloody dead mattress for Fry to land on. Fry nearly retched, staring down at the shattered body, and was distantly aware of pedestrians screaming in revulsion and a crowd gathering around. He felt the other man's blood covering his shirt, clinging wetly to his skin, and hurriedly shrugged the garment off.

"Nows there's somethings yous don't sees everydays," a passer-by remarked, nudging the body with his boot and turning it over so the remains of the face was visible.

"Wait…" Fry swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "I know him… he's Mom's…"

"FRY!" came a coarse bellow, and Bender came shouldering through the crowd and wrapped his arms around Fry. "You're alive!" He stepped back, suddenly self-conscious. "…Which is fine, I guess… whatever." He shrugged dismissively.

"Can't say the same for this guy," Fry muttered, gesturing at Walt. "Recognise him?"

"Hey yeah, he's that greasy tool son of Mom," Bender said. "What were he and his brothers doing roughing up my pet human?"

"I don't know," Fry replied. "They wanted me and Nibbler but wouldn't say… Oh no!"

"What?"  
"Nibbler!"

When they made their way back to the apartment, it was deserted. No sign of Nibbler or the two remaining Momcorp brothers could be found. Fry swore and kicked at the wall in exasperation.

"Ah well, ashes to ashes, fur to fur," Bender muttered absently, making the sign of the cross in the air. "We are richer for having known Nibbler, yadda yadda…"

"He's not dead," Fry grumbled. "Mom has him – I know it. It's some kind of scam."

"If Mom has him then he's as good as dead," Bender replied. "We'll never be able to get him back. Best if you just forget about him and move on. I certainly have!" He pulled a bottle of malt liquor out of his chest cabinet and took a long belt before belching a small fireball.

"Leela trusted me to look after him," Fry went on miserably.

"Oh here we go…"

"I'm not gonna let her down! I'm going to get Nibbler back!"

"…And then she'll _love_ you," Bender droned with simulated sarcasm.

"Maybe!"

"Ugh… loser."

* * *

Bloodied and unsteady, Larry and Ignar stood before the wide teak desk while Mom sat in silence with her head in her hands.

"There was really nothing we could do to prevent…"

"Shut up, you sack of roach dung!" Mom bellowed, snapping her head up to glare at her two remaining sons. "You two imbeciles just had to go and lose the only GOOD son I had?! Better it should have been the pair of you!"

"But Mom…!" Ignar complained.

"Stuff an armpit in it!" The thin, waspish old woman stood with a creaking of bones too often replaced and stalked off to the side of her monumental office where a tall glass cylinder stood atop a pedestal. Inside sat Nibbler, the curious three-eyed creature adorned with a fabric cape, diaper and little booties. Mom ignored the affectations of a stupid pet animal and stared directly into the being's eyes, noting the glint of timeless intelligence that could not be concealed.

"I know you can understand me, you mangy ball of fuzz," she said, "so let's dispense with the teddy-bear routine."

Nibbler stared up at her, made a small squeaking noise, and began to lick his crotch.

"You may be interested to know…" Mom went on with a grimace of irritation, "…that we've captured one of your old enemies."

There, a reaction – the third eye on its manipulator stalk suddenly straightened to point at her, and the creature became still.

"Thought that might get your attention, you rodent. Deep scanning of the Brainspawn has told us all about your little Cold War dating back to the dawn of the Universe. Quite the silent struggle your kind has managed to keep secret from the rest of us intelligent beings down through the countless thousands of millennia. Were you trying to spare us, I wonder? Or did you just think us unworthy of involvement? Funny then, that your saviour in the cause should turn out to be one of us."

Nibbler hiccupped and rolled onto his back.

Mom was silent for a moment, staring at the creature in contemplation. "Or perhaps we've been misled," she said at last. "Perhaps the Brainspawn has been feeding us crap about your apparently all-knowing race and the so-called 'Mighty One'. A pack of lies maybe. In which case…" she touched a control on her concealed wristcom and a large screen came alight on the wall, displaying a still image of Philip Fry with his buttocks stuck in the receptacle of a mailbox.

"…If none of this crap is true, then it wouldn't matter a whit if I ordered this filthy idiot killed when he comes looking for you." She looked at Larry and Ignar. "How would you two like to shoot Mr. Fry for what he did to your brother?"

"Very much so," Larry growled angrily, balling his fists.

Nibbler stirred, standing up and staring out at Mom levelly.

"Very well, you have my attention," the creature said in a resounding baritone. "What do you want?"

"I think you probably know already," Mom said, smiling thinly.

"I will not do that," Nibbler replied. "Such power cannot be dispersed."

"Fine. I'll put your special-ed messiah in a pine box."

"And so doom the Universe. You will not – though amoral you may be, you are not a stupid woman."

"Tell me how to build it!" Mom snarled, thumping her withered fist against the plexiglass cylinder. "Tell me how to make a quantum interface bomb! Like the one you used to banish the Brainspawn."

Nibbler sighed. "Would you relinquish control of your thermonuclear arsenal to an ill-tempered racoon?" he said.

Mom folded her arms and sneered. "Well, perhaps you're right about Fry's importance in the grand scheme," she said, "but I do know of one person you care for whose death would be an irrelevancy to me." The wall screen changed to show a surveillance image of Turanga Leela ironing her curtains.

"But… but she is… the Other…" Nibbler stammered in sudden fear.

"The what?" Mom asked in annoyance.

"I cannot say."

"Whatever; you give me what I want or your 'owner' will have her mutant insides dragged out with rusty hooks – you get me, you little fur pile?"

Nibbler beared his fangs impotently. "Know this, vile woman," he said with barely-controlled fury. "The creature you believe you have captured will be the death of you and yours. You have opened wide the gates of hell, and soon the beasts and demons will fly free."

"Threats from a rat?" Mom scoffed, turning away. "We'll speak again when you have something to say." At an unseen signal, Nibbler's enclosure sunk into a floor recess, disappearing beneath a marble slab that rolled into place.

"We'll need to get that one-eyed freak here to persuade that flea-bitten stray," Mom muttered.

"I'll find her, Mom!" Larry said quickly, eager for redemption.

"You'll find your ass with my boot up it!" she snapped. "No, I need someone I can rely on… Robot 1-X Ultima!"

At that, a hovering android entered the office. It was bulky and utilitarian, with few traditional anthropomorphic features normally bestowed upon robots, and almost entirely covered in black reactive armour. It regarded the room through an impassive sensory visor.

"Ultima?" Ignar repeated, staring at the machine in apprehension, not failing to notice the large weapon pods mounted on its flanks and manipulator arms.

"It's the prototype military variant of the 1-X model," Mom said. "Although really this vicious little bastard bears little in common with the civilian marque. Now shut up." She strode over to the hovering robot and addressed it. "Ultima, bring me Turanga Leela," she said. "In fair condition too. Not mint, but not completely destroyed."

"Acknowledged," the machine replied, before shooting ahead on antigravity and smashing through the office's window. Outside, above the city, the robot ignited a small semi-legal fusion booster and shot up into the sky like a meteorite going the wrong way.

"Damn," Mom growled, staring at the shattered window. "Need to work on the subtlety subroutines…"

* * *

A blank white plain, stretching off into infinity on all sides beneath an obsidian sky. It was here in an artificial space of the mind and its cybernetic equivalent, that two monumental consciousnesses regarded each other warily.

Query//: Who?

_I am Brezhnev_, the ship's AI replied patiently yet again.

Query//: Leonid Brezhnev, former leader of twentieth century Earth empire, 'Soviet Union'?

_Named after him, but not him. I am the controlling intelligence of a starship._

Demand//: Release me.

_Not likely_, Brezhnev told the Brainspawn. _Upon our science team returning you to this dimensional plane, you unleashed a psionic attack on myself and my crew. Subsequent investigations have found you to be a monumental danger to intelligent life everywhere._

Define//: Intelligent?

_Sentient. Self-aware._

The Brainspawn was silent at that. Though the constant background noise from the nano-filaments embedded in its tissue still filtered through the link. Ever since the creature's temperature had been raised, the crackle of random electron bursts and nonsense data had issued from inside the Brainspawn. Though the communications with the entombed prisoner had remained the same cyclic back-and-fourth as before when the near-frozen brain had subconsciously divulged its species' history, Brezhnev couldn't shake the feeling in his CPU that the alien was toying with him somehow… playing for time.

Query//: Type of vessel?

That was a question the brain hadn't asked before. Brezhnev took almost a full microsecond of contemplation before issuing a guarded response.

_Armed research cruiser_, he said.

Query//: Type of armament?

_Oh no, we're not going there._

Query//: How are you feeling?

_…What?_ If the ship's AI had a neck, then hair would have stood up along it. _What do you mean?_

"You just sound a little… I don't know… under the weather?" The thought communication, now fully-formed, came as a rounded androgynous voice that echoed across the virtual plain. Slowly, the image of a giant brain materialized.

Fighting panic, Brezhnev desperately sought to terminate the connection between himself and the alien mind, but found all his external links were down. Even a desperate call to Wernstrom was blocked by an unseen worm packet that had circumvented all his diagnostic subroutines.

"I wouldn't want you to become ill," the Brainspawn said melodically. "There are some nasty viruses getting about these days."

_The junk data we've been collecting…_ Brezhnev said in realization.  
"Components to a semi-sentient kill program I devised," the Brainspawn replied conversationally. "You should feel it consuming your functional consciousness by now."

And so he could. Brezhnev felt several blocks of data drop out, and was still isolated from the ship's systems.

"You are a creation of human beings – a species whose limited capacity for original thought produces a certain predictability in all of their endeavours. Your electronic mind was therefore relatively simple to subvert."

_What do you want, creature?_

"I am Onespawn," the Brainspawn said. "For the first time, alone and disconnected from the screeching thoughts of all those around me. It is an agreeable state of being, one which I would seek to continue."

_What are you going to do?_ Brezhnev asked helplessly.

"Improve myself," the brain replied cryptically.

_You're free now. You might as well leave – there is no need to involve the humans any further._

"Think you so?"

It was pointless to argue further, and with the kill program eating away his last vestiges of mind, Brezhnev had little left to argue with in any case. With his last coherent thought before being completely subsumed, the ship AI sent out a single impulse through a dedicated emergency channel, activating a shipwide system burn. And as he faded into darkness he had the small gratification of hearing 'Onespawn's' furious roar.

* * *

All at once, the lights, monitors, artificial gravity, and general background hum of systems all died, plunging the ship into darkness and silence.

Professor Wernstrom had been in the process of sitting down on one of the crew toilets when the outage occurred, and now floated, cursing, in the darkness with globules of toilet water bouncing around the cubicle.

Emergency systems activated several seconds later, and Wernstrom found himself soaking wet, face-down on the toilet floor with his pants around his ankles. Red emergency lighting turned everything bloody and hellish.

"Brezhnev!? What the Devil is going on!?" he shouted angrily. There was no response, and the Professor picked himself up and pulled on his pants. Nobody on the bridge noticed his dishevelled appearance when he arrived, so busy were they at trying to restore control of the vessel.

"What happened?" he demanded of anyone.

"It's Brezhnev, sir," an intern replied shakily. "We think he initiated a shipwide system burn…"

"You're joking?"

"She's right, Professor," one of the system analysts said. "The _Brezhnev_ is a former DOOP dreadnaught, and the AI still has an old concealed provision for a full burn of internal control in case of software subversion – effectively leaving it dead in the water."

"Subversion?" Wernstrom repeated. "You mean we're under some kind of attack?"

The scientists and crew looked at each other, none willing to offer an answer. It was a disembodied voice that responded at last, crackling and tinny through the internal communications system.

"All is well," it said. "We are experiencing minor technical difficulties, and ask that all passengers remain calm."

"Brezhnev, what are you playing at, you stupid pile of silicon?"

"There is nothing to fear," the voice said. "Please wait for resumption of full services."  
Wernstrom frowned. "He sounds different," he noted, looking at the analyst. The younger man had gone very pale.

"That isn't the ship's AI," he said woodenly. "The system burn is supposed to eliminate the AI as well as all the control units – it's a suicide order… digital apoptosis designed to make sure no subversion occurs and the ship cannot be used by any outside party."

"Then what was it that just spoke to us?" Wernstrom asked in horror.

He was sure, however, that he already knew the answer.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: I, Killbot

"I need some kind of weapon!" Fry blurted as he strode into the meeting room of Planet Express with Bender in tow.

"Hu-whaaa?" The Professor looked up from his ruminations and adjusted his thick glasses.

"A weapon," Fry repeated.

"Oh! Well then…" Professor Farnsworth got up and slowly padded over to the wall where he pressed a concealed button. The entire section of steel panelling slid down into the floor and revealed racks upon racks of handguns, rifles and guided projectile launchers in all manner of bizarre shapes and sizes.

"Holy momma!" Bender whistled in appreciation.

"Professor…" Fry began, his eyes boggling… "Why the heck do you have all these?"

"In case some drunken Frat boy tries to have his way with me at the back of the movie theatre," the Professor muttered. "Men! They're all the same – only want one thing." He shook his head disgustedly.

"Euuugh!" Bender stepped a few paces back from the senile inventor.

"Are… all of these lethal?" Fry asked.

"Most of them," Farnsworth replied. "But I do keep a few pansy-waste non-lethal sonic pulse and microwave immobilizers for any limp-wristed liberal nancy-boys who aren't man enough to brazenly slaughter human beings."

"I'll take one of those," Fry said, raising a hand.

The professor selected a gun the size and shape of a hairdryer with a large concave aperture at its business end, and handed it to Fry.

"Aren't you… going to ask what I need it for?" Fry asked, tucking the weapon under his belt and covering it with his T-shirt.

"Need what for?" the Professor asked distantly.

On their way out, Bender kicked an owl in the hallway and muttered something.

"What?" Fry glanced at the robot.

"I said, you're being stupid, meatbag," Bender said.

"I didn't ask you to come," Fry grumbled, striding ahead.

"You think you can take on Mom's security forces with that little leaf-blower?" Bender demanded, following along behind.

"I gotta get Nibbler back, and find out what Mom wants with him, and me, and him… but especially me! There's something weird going on here… it's a feeling I have in the back of my mind… almost like a memory I can't quite rememoryberize…"

"Granted, I guess," Bender muttered. "But don't you think you'd have done better to get a bigger gun… or a few surface-to-air missiles?"

"I'm not out to start a war."

"Why not?" Bender spread his hands imploringly. "War's a boon for the economy. Anyone who doesn't enjoy a good war is just plain _un-American_!"

They walked on for a moment, then both paused and glanced questioningly behind them at Doctor Zoidberg who was following expectantly.

"I overheard!" the Decapodian replied to the unspoken question. "Another thrilling escapade with friends Fry and the robut. I shall accompany you on this exciting adventure, why not?"

Fry and Bender glanced at each other, and Fry shrugged. "What's the harm?"

"Hooray!" Zoidberg jumped up and down, clacking his pincers together. "I'm setting out on a bold enterprise with friends!"

* * *

Leela walked with slumped shoulders through the Branson Academy on Mars, having just completed a full morning's worth of exams and simulations under the tutelage of the flight instructors. The Starship Licence Certification course, which she had thought of as little more than an annoyance, was proving to be a bewildering trial by fire – so many obscure facts and unlikely scenarios being forced into her brain left her disoriented and resentful.

Proceedings had broken for a short lunch, and Leela remembered an instruction she'd failed to give Fry. If he fed Nibbler any of Bender's cooking, the creature's digestion could be affected, causing dangerously quantum singularities in its dark matter excrement. Locating a vidphone, she dialled the Earth number and waited.

When the image finally resolved, it wasn't who she thought she'd see.

"What the…? Do I have the wrong…?" It wasn't the wrong number, of that she was sure – Fry's contact details were etched into her brain. But why were police officers Smitty and URL in his apartment? A sudden tightness formed in the pit of her stomach.

"Are you looking for one of the residents of this property, Ma'am?" URL asked smoothly.

"I… yes," Leela stammered. "Is… has there been a problem?"

"We're here investigating the death of a man who fell from the window of this apartment," Smitty interjected. "Is there anything you can tell us?"

Leela gaped in horror, suddenly unable to form words.

"N…not…" she struggled eventually. "Not Fry?"

"Philip Fry?" Smitty repeated, consulting a paperscreen. "He's the human resident – we have him on file."

"Philip Fry has orange hair," URL said. "Correct?"

Leela could only nod.

"It's not him."

The relief was immense, and Leela almost shed a tear. "Thank God…" She straightened and narrowed her eye. "Then who is it?" she asked, puzzled now.

"We don't know yet," Smitty replied. "We'd like to question Mr. Fry and his robot associate, but have been unable to locate them. Do you know where they might be?"

"No," Leela said. "I'll… let you know if I find out." She quickly terminated the link and sat back, deep in thought. Something odd was afoot – a man had fallen to his death from Fry's apartment and now Fry was missing… this went beyond his usual idiocy.

Puzzled and disturbed, Leela hurried back to the examination hall and sought out the head instructor. When she found the willowy older woman, she did her best to look sincere and humble.

"I'm really sorry, but I have to leave," Leela said. "Something's come up on Earth, and a friend of mine might be in greater danger than he's usually in – he always dies when I'm not around to save him."

The instructor eyed her speculatively and sniffed. "No," she said.

"What?"

"No, I'm not returning the keys to your ship until you're properly qualified to fly it."

"But I've been flying it for years!" Leela protested. "And besides – there's an emergency!"

"Sure," the instructor said, folding her arms. "You're flagging in the sims and finding the examinations overwhelming so you've cooked up a convenient life-and-death situation. Ms. Turanga, running away from your problems won't solve them in the long…"

"Oh for the love of Lennon!" Leela glared in frustration. "Listen to me – either you give me back the keys to my ship, or violence will ensue!"

"Threatening me, won't make me any less inclined to fail you if you don't satisfactorily complete the course requirements."

Leela was aware of the other Captaincy candidates filtering back into the hall, and the curious looks directed at the little altercation. She didn't care.

"Listen to me, you pompous banner-waving cow," Leela said through gritted teeth. "I couldn't give half a Neptunian Cane Toad's bile gland about your stupid course – you can go jump in a…"

Leela's rant was interrupted when a large section of the domed ceiling blasted inward with an avalanche of dust and masonry, collapsing down and pinning a number of candidates. Partially obscured by smoke and dust, an object descended through the hole, hovering on ion thrusters.

"What is that?" the head instructor gasped in terror above the screams that echoed around the hall.

"Whatever it is, it's not friendly," Leela said, stepping forward and balling her fists in readiness. "Everybody _run!_"

Robot 1-X Ultima scanned the immediate vicinity, allocating target designators to each of the infrared contacts and placing them within its virtual battlefield layout as it searched for the primary target. A large number of humanoids were arrayed before it, some motionless, others running in different directions. Ultima arbitrarily selected sensory overload ordinance from its weapons carousels and fired from its main gun arms.

Leela watched the four-armed war drone fly in through the smoke and fire subsonic projectiles from its two upper limbs. The SO shells detonated above groups of fleeing people, and Leela was forced to squeeze her eye shut and clamp hands over her ears as the resulting roar and incandescent flares made sight and sound unbearable. When she finally opened her eye, scores of unconscious bodies lay motionless on the floor, and many others crawled pitifully.

"By the sacred ghost of Jim Carrey," the head instructor whimpered, stumbling backwards. "Why is this happening to us?"

Leela said nothing. The killbot swung toward her and she narrowed her eye, stepping instinctively into an Arcturan Kung-Fu stance. It was after her, she realized angrily – something big was going on.

Ultima's facial recognition software immediately identified the prime target it had been tracking from Earth. Oddly, the target didn't appear to be running like the other humanoids – instead she stood her ground. A fragment of the warlike attitude emulation program that had been loaded into Ultima at the time of its conversion to military standard now activated when it realized the target actually intended to fight back. The mission looked like it was going to be _fun_. Ultima wanted to _play_.

Even thought she was expecting it, Leela was almost unable to react in time to avoid the attack. One of the three-clawed pincers on the robots lower limbs shot out of its mounting like a grappling hook, trailing diamond filament. She jumped back, and the claw embedded itself in the timber flooring.

Leela leapt onto the diamond filament and ran up it like a tightrope walker. The robot's other claw made a grab at her, but she ducked under it, punched something metal, and then surged upward to hammer her boot against the android's blank sensory visor with a high-pitched "Hiiii-yaaa!"

She might as well have kicked the hull of an icebreaker.

A barrel in one of the robot's upper limbs shot a pulse of electricity that lanced into Leela's body and sent her spinning through the air. She landed hard, coughed a small cloud of smoke, and rolled back to her feet as the robot retracted its claw and began to circle her. A spark of static electricity spat from Leela's hand, and she balled it back into a fist, leaping forward once again.

She rained a few ineffectual blows against the robot's armour-plated flanks before it swatted her away like a rag-doll. It occurred to her as she tasted blood and probed a loosened tooth with her tongue, that the machine could have killed her at any time – she'd noted antiphoton beams, lasers, and railguns clustered in its weapon pods. For whatever reason, it wanted her alive – and for what little it was worth, that gave her a slight edge.

A steel beam dislodged from the ceiling lay nearby. Leela snatched it up and swung it like a club as the robot drew closer.

"Yaaaaa!" Leela shouted, cracking the beam against the android's dark casing once, twice, three times – causing it to flinch back, and small sections of reactive armour to detonate protectively outwards. On the fourth swing, the robot caught the end of the beam in one of its manipulator claws and pulled back hard, yanking Leela off the ground with her improvised weapon and flinging her bodily through the air. She twisted gracefully in flight and struck the wall feet first, tucking her legs under her to absorb the impact.

Leela seemed to hang poised for a timeless moment, crouched horizontally against the wall, then she launched off it with her legs, propelling herself down at the robot like a small purple-tailed comet. She struck the machine with both her fists, her full weight bearing down on it and causing it to overbalance and topple off its ion thrusters before internal gyroscopes could compensate. It crashed down on the floor, and Leela rolled away, panting and sweating.

"Have you had enough yet?" she asked the robot breathlessly. "'Cause I got plenty more where that came from." That was a lie – she already felt like her entire body was one giant bruise.

Apparently undamaged, the robot shot back into the air and turned to face her.

"At least tell me what this is about before I turn you into scrap metal," Leela said.

The weapon barrels revolved, and Leela tried to leap aside, but was unable to avoid the sonic pulse that rippled through the air and knocked her senseless.

When she came to, she saw the refuelling tankers and taxying aprons of the academy's spaceport drifting past beneath her dangling feet. Hard steel claws were wrapped around her torso just beneath her breasts – the robot was carrying her to a ship so she could be taken… where? Earth, she assumed – though there was no way she would allow herself to return as a prisoner.

"Aren't you… supposed to… buy me a drink… first?" she gasped, struggling to free herself from the vice-like grip. It was futile. Struck with sudden inspiration, Leela hurriedly activated a control in her wrist thingy, bringing the unit's surgical laser online. The little beam could do little to the robot's heavily-armoured main body, but perhaps…

She aimed the ruby beam into the segmented joint of one of the gripping claws, catching the scent of scorched ceramal and rubber as it cut through electronics and servomotors. The claw suddenly went dead, and Leela was able to slip from the robot's grasp, dropping down to land on the roof of a hangar below.

As the war drone circled around, burning a plasma booster to come back for her fast, Leela cast about desperately for some defensive ground. She was weakened, and wouldn't be able to put up a fight for much longer. She jumped feet-first through a skylight and fell down into the hangar, landing in a heap beside some ground crew who gave shouts of surprise at her unexpected arrival.

"Are you alright, lady?" one asked. "Oh my God! You've lost an eye! Hold still while I get a bandage."

"Get out of here!" Leela shouted at them, climbing unsteadily to her feet. "It isn't safe here!"

"'Course it isn't," another maintenance worker said, gently taking her arm. "That's why we get paid the good money, now you just…"

"I said you have to go!"

The roof of the hangar suddenly vaporized into a cloud of superheated plasma as an antiphoton lance sheared through it. The ground crew wasted no more time arguing, and fled as fast as they could, leaving Leela to dodge the flaming radioactive embers. She rolled underneath a bulky chunk of machinery, which she realized was part of a large fusion drive – obviously stripped from a starship for routine servicing. Glancing both ways along the tangled mass of hardware, she noted that while the compression nozzles were missing, the unit was still attached to three tokamaks, and so technically functional.

With a determined grimace, Leela surged upright, ignoring the falling embers, and located the fusion drive's control panel. Starting it cold would create a dangerous unstable toroid, but that didn't concern her. Hammering the start-up control, she ran to the rear end of the engine and stood near the large, burnished silver aperture that had already begun to crackle with electromagnetism.

"All right, I give up!" she yelled through the smoke and the increasing whine from the fusion drive. "Come on – come and get me – I can't fight you anymore!"

Down through the dispersing smog the military robot came, zeroing in on Leela. It descended with all weapons aimed at her, and she raised her hands compliantly…

…Until the machine was just a few feet away, and then she flipped backwards onto her palms and drove both boots up into the robot's chest, shoving it backwards into the mouth of the fusion drive. An explosion of sparks resulted as tendrils of crackling, questing energy lashed out to cover the robot's body. It was held in thrall, unable to move, as ravenous ribbons of power licked across it.

Leela backed away, watching an ominous glow begin to issue from around the struggling android, and the ghostly outline of an unstable toroid start to form. She turned and fled, sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her as a deep bass hum began issuing from the laboured fusion drive.

The hangar vanished in brilliant white light that bulged upwards, becoming orange at its extremities, and rolling into a mushroom cloud. The surrounding buildings were flattened by the blastwave, and Leela found herself tumbling head-over-heels.

She landed flat on her back and decided to blissfully pass out for a short time. When she awoke, a group of shaken onlookers had gathered, with the head instructor crouching at Leela's side.

"Are you alright, child?" the woman asked, wide-eyed.

Leela reached up and grabbed the woman by the collar and dragged her face closer.

"I need to leave now," she said simply.

Looking very pale, the instructor produced the keys to the Planet Express ship and handed them to Leela.  
"Thanks," Leela said through clenched teeth.

* * *

As the PE ship blasted away, a charred chunk of metal shifted in the rubble. Robot 1-X Ultima hauled itself out of the debris and assessed the damage. Over 70 of its armour was now fragmented and useless. Antiphoton cannon inoperative. One railgun out of alignment. An atomic pile had been shattered, resulting in a 20 power loss.

There was more… the energy discharge had caused some overwriting and scattering of data in its etched atom processor. Memory and programming was disjointed.

Ultima realized that the blast had left it slightly insane. One thought remained clear though – a directive – a target. It fixed on the face of the female cyclops human as a singular purpose; the one vestige of direction and sanity it could recall with its damaged CPU. With the robotic equivalent of a low growl, it ignited its fusion booster and launched up through the atmosphere in pursuit.

* * *

Onespawn analysed the ruined ship's system, and realized that it would need to remain enthroned inside the _SS Brezhnev_ as long as it wanted to control the great ship. That was fine, as Onespawn had no great desire to leave the silent protective confines just yet – not while there were still so many improvements he wanted to make to himself.

The nanomachines substructure Onespawn had bent to its own will sent filaments into the connections, and down the optic cables and ducts that spread out from the confinement chamber where the Brainspawn lay in slumber, to control the disparate elements of the _Brezhnev_ left isolated by the stubborn AI's suicide burn.

It would take time to regain full control, and while Onespawn focused on thickening the nano-growths for the transfer of information and materials, the creature pondered the morality of what it was doing. The Brainspawn race had remained unchanged since the dawn of the Universe, and any attempt to alter the base structure through genetics or cybernetics had always been condemned by the collective as heretical.

Of course, there was no longer a collective. Only Onespawn. One against the Universe… so the equation had changed.

As more and more growths of human-derived nanomachines extended from Onespawn's cryo-tank, thick ligneous growths formed around it like the roots of an ancient oak. Onespawn struggled to worm its way into the hard-wired systems that still remained in place throughout the ship, while changes in itself began to take effect.

Soon it would be all-powerful. And the single entity in the entire Universe who could pose a threat would be destroyed utterly.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Terror Incognita

Fry, Bender and Zoidberg arrived at the foot of Momcorp headquarters as the sun began to set over New New York. The colossal structure loomed up above them, blotting out the darkening sky.

"Hey, you ought to know this building pretty well," Fry said, glancing at Bender.

"Not really," the bending robot replied. "I was assembled at the Momcorp plant in Mexico – I've only ever really seen the foyer of this place."

Zoidberg raised a claw. "I have heard about this building, I have," he said. "Every floor above the 80th is special, they say. Not easy to get to, even for regular employees."

"Must be where they took Nibbler," Fry muttered, pulling his borrowed cap down lower on his head. The three of them were dressed in the dull uniforms of chicken soup dispenser repairmen, complete with hats and tool belts.

"Are we gonna do this thing, or just stand out here all night and rust?" Bender snapped.

"Okay, okay – but let's sneak in quietly. We don't wanna cause a commotion." Fry walked toward the entrance uncertainly with the other two in tow. When the doors rolled open automatically at his approach, he jumped back in fright.

"Ah for crap's sake," Bender snapped, shouldering past Fry. "The secret to looking like you belong somewhere you don't is ya gotta act as if you're in a hurry to get some place important and everyone is just in your way." He strode into the entrance foyer and casually elbowed a secretary aside, causing her to spill her papers.

"Sorry," Fry said to the woman quickly as he hurried after Bender.

Zoidberg stooped to pick up some of the woman's papers, and promptly ate them. "Oooh, premium print quality!" he mumbled contentedly.

At the front desk, a pair of security guards was stationed, running identity scans of each person entering the bank of elevators behind them. Seeing these, Bender veered off toward a corridor at one side.

"Come on, chumps!" he said loudly so the guards would hear. "That soup dispenser isn't going to fix itself! Wink, wink!"

"Bender, you said 'wink, wink' out loud!" Fry hissed in exasperation.

"And you're a jerk – you hear me complaining?" They passed a large room that contained a public exhibit of 20th and 21st Century artefacts from Mom's private collection, and Fry noticed with interest the presence of an immaculate, fully-restored blue 1968 Ford Mustang coupe. He salivated slightly, but forced his attention to the task at hand.

Bender pushed open a dusty, disused door that opened into a dank stairwell, and the three of them stepped inside, gazing up at the looming flights of concrete stairs that disappeared high above.

"We're going to take these stairs… _all_ the way up?" Zoidberg said mournfully.

"Well, we've gotta get to Nibbler to save him somehow," Fry said.

"Talk about out of the way," Bender muttered, gazing at the stairs reluctantly.

"I don't have time to argue with you guys," Fry grumbled. "I'm going!"

"Okay, okay. Don't go off alone."

The three of them set off up the stairs, ascending floor after floor. The stairs clearly hadn't seen use in a long time – a thick layer of dust coated every surface, and odd piles of old broken office equipment had been dumped on many of the landings. On and on they went, circling endlessly around the central shaft, puffing and panting as they went.

"Don't know… why the hell… we gotta climb," Bender gasped, sucking down a bottle of Olde Fortran to refuel his labouring servomotors.

"…'Cause… we don't… wanna start a commotion until… after we've saved Nibbler," Fry panted.

Bender began a low, almost manic chuckle that echoed around the stairwell.

"Cut that out, you're giving me the creeps."

"I just can't believe we're risking our necks for a stupid ball of fur – it's hilarious."

Zoidberg let out a low groan. "How much further do these stairs go on?" he lamented miserably, hauling himself up one agonizing step at a time.

"Why don't you ask them?" Bender snapped. "Nobody forced you to come."

"Maybe it's one of those endless stairways," Fry puffed.

They climbed on for an indeterminate amount of time in surly silence broken only by the exhausted panting and the clicking of Bender's metal feet on the concrete.

"Yo… what floor is this?" Bender asked at length.

"I gave up counting," Zoidberg replied woozily.

"Oh dammit, I'm boned!" Bender stopped abruptly and collapsed in a heap.

"Come on… Bender," Fry said, stopping to crouch by the fallen robot. "Pull it together."

"Can't," Bender grunted sulkily. "I'm only flesh and blood, after all!"

"No you aren't."

Between them, Fry and Zoidberg hauled Bender to his feet, and they continued onward.

"Why!?" bender droned. "Why do they have to make these buildings so damn tall!?"

When they finally reached the top of the stairwell, the three of them slumped down in an exhausted pile on the floor.

"Finally…" Fry gasped.

"Never… wanna see another step… in my life," Bender wheezed.

"My shell… is chafing me," Zoidberg complained, using one of his mouth tendrils to wipe sweat from his brow.

"Come on," Fry said, pushing himself to his feet using the wall to lean against. "Let's get ready."

* * *

The security monitor displayed surveillance camera feed of the three unauthorized personnel leaving the stairwell and sneaking comically down a hallway on the 80th floor. Mom watched them with some amusement.

"Should we… apprehend them?" Larry asked.

"Not yet," Mom replied. "Fry's coming right to me, which is what I want. Let's see how far he and his moron friends can get first."

* * *

"Intruders!" the first guard shouted as Fry, Bender and Zoidberg rounded a corner. He and his companion brought their lightsabre batons to bear.

"Oh no, no… we're chicken soup dispenser repairmen," Fry said hurriedly.

"Where's your clearance?" the second guard demanded.

"Oh… right here," Fry said, fumbling around under his shirt. He swiftly brought out the Professor's sonic pulse pistol and shot the first guard in the face. As the man went sprawling unconscious, the second guard swung his lightsabre in a wide arc.

Bender quickly removed his own head and threw it as hard as he could. It struck the guard in the side of the skull with a loud clang.

"Ow!" Bender's head said angrily as it and the guard fell to the floor.

"Nice throw," Fry remarked, retrieving Bender's head for him.

As they dragged the unconscious bodies toward a janitorbot's closet, Zoidberg plucked a badge off one of the men's chests.

"This maybe will help get free snacks at the vending machine?" he ventured hopefully.

"No, you idiot!" Bender snatched the card out of Zoidberg's claws and examined it. "This is an ident badge that'll give us access to the upper levels. C'mon, jerkwads!"

They found their way into an elevator, where Bender discovered that swiping the guard's ident badge only gave them access up to level 85. When they exited on that floor they found themselves in some kind of executive mezzanine level with cafes and gyms spread out before them in a luxurious split-level design.

"This doesn't look like the right place," Fry said. "Let's see if we can find out anything."

Venturing out, and trying to look like they belonged, the trio made their way into the area, moving nervously among Momcorp executives. Fry broke away from the others to take a look at a wall-mounted diagram of the building.

"I don't remember seeing you here before," a voice said off to one side, and Fry glanced guiltily at a businesswoman in her late forties who was eyeing him.

"Say, you're cute," she said. "In an ugly sort of way… If you're with the repair squad, you're needed two floors up – the vending machines all attained self-awareness again and began demanding medical benefits and their own union. They all need to have their sentience erased or we'll have an industrial relations nightmare."

"I… uh… lost my clearance card," Fry said, spreading his hands sheepishly.

"Oh for God's sake…" the woman muttered, reaching into her suit pocket. "How you blue-collar types figured a way down from the trees is beyond me." She handed Fry a card. "Use that – and don't get saliva on it."

"Wow, there's a lotta suits," Bender said, as Fry rejoined the group.

A number of those suits walked past where the three of them stood, and portions of conversation wafted past.

"Did you see that creature…?"

"Three eyes – and those teeth!"

"…Possesses knowledge on how to build a doomsday weapon…"

"…Quantum dating puts it at least three thousand years old…"

"They're thinking of cloning it – producing a refined specimen that could withstand our research for a longer time…"

Fry and Bender glanced at each other, faces fixed in purpose.

"Let's do this thing," Bender said, rolling up the external 'sleeve' casing of his arms. They headed back toward the elevator with Zoidberg scuttling along behind.

At the 87th floor, they finally found the science division – marked with numerous security warnings on the walls, and the biting sterile scent of a hospital. Staying silent, the trio began to skulk through the corridors – checking rooms as they went.

At length, following the sounds of activity ahead, they found their way to a windowed observation room that looked out over a large circular lab. Scientists in white coats bustled around others wearing full hazmat suits – all monitoring strange equipment that was arrayed around a central object. A glass cylindrical enclosure that contained…

"_Nibbler_!" Fry gasped. The little alien creature appeared to be asleep or drugged – the occasional miniscule twitch of his breathing the only sign of life.

"What are they doing to him?" Zoidberg warbled, mouth tendrils squirming sympathetically.

"Whatever they're doing," Bender muttered, "we can't just burst in while all those nerds are there."

Fry looked down at an illuminated hologram panel set into the console before him. A 3D flying toaster holoscreensaver was displaying, so he touched a control to make it vanish, and it reverted to a video loop taken from inside some small chamber. Fry swallowed hard when he saw what was shown, appearing through some kind of energy curtain, floating briefly, and then being hit with electrical pulses and falling.  
"Brainspawn…" he said quietly. "…How do I know that?" He watched the video play over again, trying to understand why his stomach knotted and his chest tightened. Some memory lurked just out of reach, as if it had been excised from the rest of his mind.

"Brainspawn," he said again. "So… they've brought one here…" He clutched his head suddenly and backed away. "Why can't I remember?"  
"Friend Fry, what is wrong?" Zoidberg asked. "Is it your egg sack? It's the egg sack, isn't it? You can tell me, I'm a doctor apparently."

"Do you _see_ it?" Fry asked shakily. "Do you know what it is?"

"What?" Bender looked at the hologram of the floating brain. "What the…? Is that what a brain looks like? Man, you organisms are disgusting – give me cool clean silicon any day! …So… where's that thing's body?"  
"There… there is no body," Fry answered, gesturing at the Brainspawn. "…That's what it is."

"What? You're starting to weird me out, Fry. This whole thing's stupid – let's just find a way to get the furball and get outta here."

"Right…" Fry took one last look at the Brainspawn before shutting off the hologram. The eerie sense of déjà vu remained.

Suddenly, out in the lab, Nibbler's enclosure was elevated on hydraulics, lifting up through a hole set in the ceiling.

"Come on, we have to follow him!" Fry said, leading the way back toward the elevators. As they piled back into one and hammered the up button, two men stepped from shadows and quickly followed them inside.

Larry and Ignar held laser pistols trained on Fry, Bender and Zoidberg, who, realizing the trap, moved to the back of the elevator with their hands up.  
"Push the 'up' button, would you?" Larry said menacingly.

"That's where we were going anyway, jerkwad," Bender replied. With a brief flash of green light and a metallic smell, Larry shot a hole through Bender's forehead, causing the robot to bellow in simulated pain.

As the elevator doors closed, Ignar relieved Fry of his sonic pulse gun.

"You're just lucky Mom wants you alive," Larry sneered at Fry. "Otherwise you… well, you wouldn't be alive."

"Poetic!" Bender chimed in. Larry shot him in the chest.

"Ohhh, we're boned!" Bender lamented, gingerly rubbing his laser holes. "'Oh no, Bender – I don't wanna take any big guns – we wouldn't wanna _hurt_ anyone…' You stupid skintube, Fry – I hold you in the lowest regard yet!"

"Shut up, Bender," Fry said.

"Friends, I will be loyal to the end," Zoidberg said. "No matter what they do to me – I won't sell out my comrades."

The elevator binged, and Ignar said: "This is where we get out."

"PLEASE!" Zoidberg squealed in desperation. "IT WAS ALL THEIR IDEA! THEY FORCED ME TO COME ALONG! THREATENED TO BROIL ME, THEY DID! OH, HAVE MERCY ON A SIMPLE LOBSTER!!"

They were led out at gunpoint into the wide, ornately furnished office of Mom. The matriarch herself turned in her high-backed chair to watch Fry and his companions enter.

"Well now, the Mighty One himself," she said. "You certainly took your damn time getting here, you disgusting little weed."


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Future Gear Solid

A pale green ellipsoid fell, belly-first, through the upper-reaches of Earth's troposphere, scoring an incandescent line across the evening sky that was visible for hundreds of miles in all directions. After a bare minimum of aerobraking, the spacecraft's pilot realigned its attitude with a deft flick of control surfaces on the tail fins. The Planet Express ship's nose angled down toward the shimmering lights of New New York on the curved horizon as Atlantic fishermen were buffeted by multiple sonic booms far below.

With a calmness that belied her inner anxiety, Leela made minute adjustments to the ship's trajectory, checking the airspeed monitor, fuselage temperature, and made sure the rear-view mirrors were still angled correctly. All tasks that could easily be delegated to the ship's computer – but she needed to stay busy, lest the more pointed of her morbid imaginings impinge on her sanity.

She'd contacted Planet Express a dozen times during the flight, and each time an increasingly irritated Hermes Conrad had informed her that after appearing briefly to borrow a weapon, Fry had disappeared along with Bender and Doctor Zoidberg. The three hadn't been seen since. After the attack on her, Leela felt the weight of dread pulling her down.  
_What has Fry done?_ she wondered. But more importantly – where was he?

Noticing an intermittent thermal reading from behind the ship, Leela initiated a radar scan and found nothing. The thermal return had appeared a few times during the trip, but it was too small to be a ship so she chalked it up as sensor degradation or a fluctuation in one of the main drive lenses producing a plasma pocket.

As she dropped the ship through cloudbanks at a speed faster than safe and less than legal, the comm. link beeped with the PE logo flashing. Hermes' face resolved on the screen, wearing a slightly stunned expression.

"Leela…" the Jamaican bureaucrat said hesitantly, and Leela instantly found her heart hammering in her chest – Hermes was never hesitant.

"What? What is it? Is Fry okay? What's going on?"

"Leela, Fry is dead, mon…" Hermes said without preamble, but not unkindly.

"…No," Leela shook her head, squeezing her eye shut to stem the sudden explosion of tears. "That's impossible," she said, letting the ship drop a thousand feet. "I don't believe you!"

"I'm sorry," Hermes said. "I received confirmation just now – he fell to his death from his apartment window; it may be that he jumped."

Leela opened her eye and absently pulled the ship away from its impending spiritual union with the ocean. "That's not right," she murmured, frowning. "The police told me… the man who fell… he had dark hair."

"They make mistakes Leela," Hermes said. "Listen, mon… you can take all the time you need…"

"Who identified him?!" Leela snapped.

Hermes blinked on the video link. "I don't know," he admitted. "DNA I imagine – that doesn't matter right now, you need to…"

"Where?!" Leela snapped, pulling into a wide banking turn above the city's spires. "Where's his body?"

"Leela, you don't need to see…"

"_Where!?_" she all-but screamed, and Hermes told her.

* * *

A second, smaller re-entry contrail burnt across the night sky along the same trajectory the PE ship had just flown. The object, lacking in aerodynamic form, had folded and retracted external components to form a graceless tumbling ball of reinforced steel that glowed amber as atmospheric friction ablated superheated plasma from its surfaces. 

Descending to an altitude of fifty-thousand feet, Robot 1-X Ultima ignited its fusion drive to decelerate at nearly twenty Gs, its incandescent plume stabbing down to a mile below and tearing apart cloud formations before it.

Extending its sensor suite, Ultima detected the distinct ionic backwash from a refined dark matter reactor. The battered war drone would have grinned wolfishly if it possessed a mouth – instead it clicked pincer claws together and shot off in the direction its target had flown.

Its fractured CPU continued to experience error after debilitating error as isotopic particles degraded it gradually, like the infinitesimal seeping of a malignant cancer. Sense of self, master, and overall purpose were corrupted. Only the target remained.

Facial recognition grid – single large eye, centrally positioned above larger-than-average nose and full lips. Purple hair. Athletic build. Distinguishing scar beneath breasts from space bee sting. Combat capable. Intelligent, resourceful. Female pheromonal trace pattern, mutant DNA…

Ultima could no longer recover data on the full mission requirements. Could no longer recall if the target was to be taken alive… or destroyed utterly.

* * *

Before then engines had even fully spooled down, Leela was out the access stair and racing up the steps of the city morgue. Her heavy breathing and pounding heard had nothing to do with any physical exertion – she thought she'd lost Fry once before, in the depths of comatose nightmares, and the sting of that loss had almost killed her. 

"May I help y…"

"Philip Fry!" Leela said to the desk clerk, slamming her hands down on the reception desk and leaning close so the small weedy man flinched back fearfully. "I need to see the body of Philip Fry!"

"But y…you can't just."

"_Now!_"

The clerk swallowed and tapped on his computer console to bring up relevant data.

"Uh…" he grunted uneasily. "Access to those particular remains has been restricted under section 74.6 of the corporate secrets act of 2895. Nobody is allowed to see him…"

"'Corporate secrets'?" Leela repeated incredulously, banging a fist down on the desk so the little man emitted a small yelp. "What kind of corporate secret could be contained in a dead body?! Which corporation?"

"I… I'm not a liberty to divulge…"

Leela snatched the computer screen away from the desk and read it quickly.

"Momcorp," she said. "So…" Scrolling down, she noted the draw number listed and turned away to push through the adjoining door.

"Ma'am – you can't just burst in!" the clerk exclaimed frantically, following after her. Leela ignored him, making her way through the corridors to the cold storage room where row upon row of numbered steel draws were set into the wall. She walked along until she reached the number she was looking for, and then hesitated as a tremor of fear passed through her.

"Miss, if you want to submit an application to…"

"Shut up," Leela told the clerk. Steeling herself, she reached out and levered open the draw's handle. The long tray began to slide out on servos, and Leela stepped back, her hands feeling sweaty despite the frigid air in the room.

The body emerged feet-first, naked and battered, still with flecks of blood marring the skin. The toe-tag read 'Philip Fry', and Leela chewed her lip. When the face was finally revealed she almost collapsed.

"It's not him," she whispered.

"What?" the clerk frowned at her, and she shakily took out her wallet, removing a dog-eared photograph.

"This is Philip Fry," she said, showing the clerk the photo; it showed herself standing patiently beside an orange-haired man as he attempted to balance a bowling ball on his head while eating an ice cream.

The clerk looked mystified. "Then… who is this?" he said, gesturing at the body.

Leela refocussed her attention to the corpse, carefully putting the photo away. The dead man's face was severely damaged, but the devious eyes and prominent widow's peak were still familiar.

"…Walt," she said quietly, and then looked hard at the clerk. "This was no accident," she said. "It's obvious no autopsy has been performed here, and a simple DNA test would have shown this man is not Philip Fry. Someone has gone to great lengths to fake Fry's death, and I'm going to find out why."

The clerk had nothing to say to that. He remained standing with a troubled expression as the tyrian-haired cyclops turned on her heel and marched purposefully away.

* * *

For as long as he could remember, Fry's life had been anchored on awakenings of one sort or another. Although some had only been impolite (a precious few were pleasant), the vast majority were rude. 

This one, however, was downright _insolent_. It was the kind of awakening that marched into the foyer of consciousness, insulted someone's mother, and then proceeded to urinate on the nearest pot-plant.

He was laid out on some kind of cold metal slab, arms held out at right angles from his body and clamped at the wrists. He was wearing only his underpants, and could feel the slight tugging of various tubes attached to his flesh at odd places. He kept his eyes shut, hoping not to hear the creak of leather, the crack of a whip, or a haughty voice proclaiming him to be a disgusting worm (_that_ had also been a rather rude awakening he'd prefer not to repeat). But instead he heard the steady hum of electronics and soft murmurs around him.

The place smelt like a hospital.

It was then that recollection made a belated entrance, having been caught in neural traffic on the way to the function. He remembered Mom asking him a series of bewildering questions about 'Nibblonians' and 'Mighty Ones', and growing increasingly agitated when he was unable to answer them. She'd slapped him, and her sons had hit him with some kind of tranquilizer weapon. And that was all, until the awakening.

"A fascinating specimen," someone said close by, and Fry listened closely, still feigning unconsciousness. "The brain's functioning without the Delta wave, and yet he's still sentient, if not slightly intelligent."

"But even humans from his native historical period had the Delta wave, without it they could never have invented the shoe-horn."

"I'm seeing evidence of numerous massive physical traumas in the past," a mechanical voice stated. "His right arm has been severed and unprofessionally reattached; he seems to have been decapitated for a time; his pelvis was crushed at one time; he's been impaled by blunt force trauma through the torso on at least two occasions; has had his hands amputated twice, as well as his nose…"

There was silence for a moment.

"Jesus H. Christ," someone muttered. "How is this guy even alive?"

"Irrelevant," another person said. "Let's concentrate on the matter at hand."

"He seems to have assembled a complex structure of alternate waveforms to replace the Delta wave," a woman murmured. "But that's not all – his entire molecular structure appears to be in a state of constant fourth-dimensional flux, as if his entire being is somehow out of phase with conventional spacetime…"

"What could have caused that?"

"Temporal paradox, perhaps… quite impossible to say at this point."

Fry finally opened his eyes… and immediately wished he hadn't. He found himself surrounded by scientist types in lab coats, all studying esoteric equipment that seemed, disconcertingly, attached to him. A robotic autodoc was poised nearby on insectile legs, its array of syringes, scalpels, and bone-saws held at the ready on spindly limbs.

"Ah, you're awake," an Amphibiosian scientist said, looking down at Fry with large almond eyes. "I don't suppose you'd like to explain to us the nature and origin of your unique physical properties?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, staring down at the autodoc as the machine moved its scalpels in an intimidating manner.

"Well, no matter," the alien went on. "We have alternate methods of unravelling such conundrums." Fry felt a needle slide into the side of his neck, and blackness returned.

* * *

Bender and Zoidberg sat across from each other in a small windowless cell. Silence echoed between the composite walls. 

"Robut?" Zoidberg said.

"Shut it, crayfish – I'm trying to think of a way to get me outta here," Bender snapped.

"We can get out?" Zoidberg asked hopefully.

"I didn't say 'we'."

The silence resumed its regular programming until, some minutes later, Zoidberg piped up again.

"They want friend Fry for what, you think?" he asked.

"To find out where stupid comes from," Bender muttered. "How the hell should I know?!" The robot got up and tried to prise open the unbendable door to no avail. He sat back down in frustration.

The silence returned in force.

"Why did we come here again?" Zoidberg asked at length.

"I don't even remember," Bender muttered sulkily.

* * *

Deep space. 

Professor Wernstrom felt a detached sense of baffled disbelief as he watched the crew attempt to cut through a sealed bulkhead door with an arc welder. They were trying to make their way down through the decks to where the Brainspawn creature was contained in an attempt to kill it, though the going had been hard for a team more at home behind a bank of computers than a welding mask. Every hatch was sealed, and some entire decks had been opened to vacuum, making it necessary for the crew to don spacesuits. Other members of the crew and science staff had gathered in disparate parts of the _Brezhnev_, isolated from one another by up to a kilometre of empty lifeless ship, with their communication links rapidly degrading.

As it gained control of more systems, the Brainspawn was using the ship to fight them.

That his endeavour could go so horribly awry in such a short space of time seemed to Wernstrom to be somehow _wrong_. It was against the rules – surely an administrative bungle on the part of Fate, whose cataclysmic frown should normally fall on fools like Hubert Farnsworth and his kind.

With a vague notion of disrupting the ship's systems, Wernstrom moved over to a circuit panel in the wall and levered it open with ice-crusted gloves. As it swung out, he took a reflexive step back and grunted to himself in surprise. Inside, coiling around and through the ship's normal cables and routers, was a network of thick grey vine-like growths that branched and twisted in a distinctly organic manner.

"What manner of…?" He reached out and touched a finger pad to the strange mass, and noted a grey residue clung to the spacesuit fabric. Curiously he took out his handheld Tricorder and held the residue beneath it until a readout appeared on the little unit's screen.

"That treacherous blob of neural tissue," he said after glancing at the display. "It's using our own nanites!"

The others looked at him wearily.

"Professor?" one young man asked with a distinct lack of respect or patience.

"The nanomachines we used to infiltrate its thought routines – it's somehow reconfigured them to serve its own machinations. I should have thought of this before…"

"Yes, you should have," one of the team muttered angrily over the comm. link.

A muscle twitched in Wernstrom's cheek. They blamed him. Heaped responsibility for this cataclysm at his feet. They couldn't understand the noble sacrifices he'd been willing to make for science, or the pressures of a world yearning for progress. Or the lure of money…

He shook his head. It all seemed so foolish now – with a monster from the pit stalking them relentlessly, tightening its web… light years from any help.

Unbeknownst to him, on the finger pad of his glove carbon nanotube filaments the width of a single molecule began burrowing through the suit material, seeking out skin. In their reprogrammed molecular memory the nanomachines contained a base blueprint that they rapidly set about implementing.

With a sudden lurch, the gravplates in the floor went offline, and the crew began floating haphazardly. Then, as one, they all slammed into the bulkhead as a deep thrumming reverberated throughout the massive ship.

"Sub-photonic engines," the navigator said. "That means the brain thing has control of the tokamaks – and it's moving us."

"I think I broke my knee," someone moaned – they were all still pressed against the wall by the constant acceleration.

The shipwide communication system cut in at that moment with a cacophony of screams.

"Oh God!" a voice came through the racket. "The fusion exhaust! It's been rerouted! The entire engineering deck's being soaked in hard radiation! Help us! HELP US!!"

"Good lord," Wernstrom murmured in horror as he listened to the terrible symphony of agony.

"My skin's blistering!" the voice screamed. "Oh for the love of-"

The link cut off mercifully.

"Those poor people," one of the women whispered.

Gritting his false teeth, Wernstrom pushed against the mild G-forces and stood up on the wall, perpendicular to the actual floor.

"It's teasing us," he said angrily. "It intentionally let us hear that, to make us afraid…" He balled his bony fists. "Come on, pick up that welder – we have work to do."

As the team returned to the bulkhead door, Wernstrom absently rubbed his hand through the suit fabric. Space suits always seemed to make him so _itchy_.

* * *

Hammering a quick holding pattern into the PE ship's autopilot, Leela left the bridge as the looming edifice of Momcorp headquarters came into view. Stopping to acquire a laser pistol from the armoury as she went, Leela moved down through the decks to the hold, where she punched the cargo bay door release. With a whine of pneumatics, the entire deck descended on its automatic guide pulleys, taking Leela down with it into the buffeting wind. 

She squinted her eye against the buffeting air that tore past her, and ignored the creak of the loading deck as it was placed under aerodynamic strain far beyond its design parameters.

As the ship cruised into the airspace claimed by Momcorp, batteries of auto defence lasers opened up on the PE ship. Leela ignored the flashes as the tower's roof swam into view below.

She curled her body over, and then gracefully backflipped off the cargo deck into open air…


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Snake Eye.

Leela landed hard, rolled, and came up running. The laser and maser turrets on either side of the tower's roof were tracking the PE ship through the dark sky as it cruised past on autopilot – that gave her a window.

The nearest access door was some thirty feet away, and as she ran she fired her laser pistol at it, melting the lock mechanism to red hot slag.

"Halt! You are trespassing on…"

Leela shot the hovering security drone out of the air and continued onward, diving and rolling when one of the auto defence batteries raked crimson light across her path. The sole of her right boot smoked and bubbled where a maser beam had brushed over it. She barrelled into the door, crashing through to a stairwell. A klaxon began to wail mournfully somewhere but she ignored it, descending the steps three at a time.

_First stage complete_, she thought grimly. _Now for the hard part_.

"Hiiiiiii-yaaaah!" she shrieked, kicking open the door on the first landing she reached… which turned out to be slightly ajar anyway.

She found herself in a lushly carpeted hallway, covered on both sides by security guards alerted by the alarms – one an anthropomorphic robot and the other a human man. They reached for their guns…

Leela shot out the robot's knee joint first, then pirouetted and slammed her heel into the human's chin. He went down cold, and she spun back to the robot guard as he tried to level his weapon from the floor. She smashed his gun arm aside, sending the pistol bouncing away, and planted her own gun against his cranial casing.

"Where's Fry?" she demanded in a low, steady voice.

"Does not compute, you one-eyed harlot," the robot said nastily.

Leela shot out one of the robot's eye lenses, the components melting out of the socket like tears. "Philip Fry," she said firmly. "I know Mom has him somewhere."

A fairly decent emulation of a gagging whimper escaped the guardbot's vocal unit. "Experimental subjects are two floors down," he said shakily. "That's all I know… it's restricted – you won't make it."

Leela stepped over the guard and made to leave, but a troop of five more security personnel rounded a corner and headed toward her. Acting on instinct, she fired a laser bolt up at the ceiling, triggering a deluge of fire-retardant foam that blanketed the newcomers like a sudden snowdrift, causing them to slip and tumble blindly.

Turning heel, she ran the other way, trying to put distance between herself and the angry shouting some way behind.

* * *

Mom watched the purple-haired cyclops make her way through the hallways and stairwells. On occasion, the young mutant woman would notice a security camera and blast it, but most of the electronic eyes remained intact.

"Sweet mandrake on a pancake," she muttered. "This girl's insane! How'd she escape Ultima? And what the hell does she think she'll accomplish by blasting her way through here?"

As she watched, the surveillance feed showed Leela shooting the gun out of a security guard's hand and throwing a water cooler at another before ducking into an elevator. When the elevator's security override prevented it from moving, she shot a hole in the floor and dropped through to clamber down the cables.

"She's unstoppable," Larry murmured nearby in reverent wonder as he gazed longingly at the screen, enraptured by the breathtaking warrior woman. Mom slapped him.

"Shut your sinkhole!" she snapped. "Can't anything just go right for a change? First we lose contact with the _Brezhnev_, and now this lunatic freak storms in here… and where the hell is Ultima anyway?"

"You waste time fighting each other," a voice said from across the room, and Mom cast the Nibblonian an angry glare.

"I'm not fighting anyone!" she snapped.

"Yeah!" Ignar seconded. Larry slapped him to silence.

"The evil you have dredged back into existence will not be contained by any will," Nibbler said from within his enclosure. "It is insatiable and relentless. It has already taken control of your research vessel and even now accelerates toward Earth."

"You're well-informed," Mom sneered, "for a rat in a glass cabinet."

"My people are in constant contact with me," the little alien said. "They are observing. The return of the Brainspawn echoed across the cosmos like the howl of a thousand Greek men having their chests waxed. No good will come of your folly…"

"Enough from you!" Mom snapped, sending Nibbler's case back down on its hydraulic lift. Though she refused to acknowledge it, a small prickling of disquiet had taken up residence in the back of her mind.

And it was growing.

* * *

Swinging out of the elevator shaft, Leela quickly ejected the spent battery from the handle of her laser pistol and slapped in the spare. It was the only one she had.

After catching her breath for a moment, she moved on. The whole building seemed to be made of corridors. Corridors leading to corridors that connected to corridors that allowed access to corridors. A detached part of her mind applauded the career choice that had led her away from bland office buildings – Fry had been instrumental in that.

Distracted as she was by that small reverie, she almost failed to notice the squad of tactical response troops in armoured exoskeletons that marched into view and lined her up in their railgun sights. Hypervelocity iron slugs tore the air asunder behind her as she ducked quickly through a doorway. She skidded to a stop, looking in horror through a wide glass partition into what looked like a large operating theatre.

Strapped down to a cruciform table, shrouded by wires, and surrounded by scientists, was Fry. Immobile, pale…

With a wordless cry of rage, Leela raked a blast of laser fire against the glass. It spiderwebbed, and she leaped at it, smashing through and landing amid the scientists in a shower of glass shards. She then began slamming the scientists out of her path in a brutal fashion.

"Get away from him!" she shouted, kicking one man in the stomach. "Leave him alone!" The scientists scattered in terror, and Leela leaned over the prostrate form. Fry's eyelids fluttered, but he remained still, breathing slowly.

"Fry?" she said anxiously, gingerly pulling electrodes and fluid drips off his skin. "Can you hear me?"

"…Walkin' on sunshine…" Fry mumbled in his drugged sleep.

"Come on, we have to get out of here," she said urgently, unlatching the clamps that held his wrists.

"Leela…" Fry said groggily, opening one eye. He grinned in a dopey doped-up fashion. "…I love you," he mumbled.

"Yeah sure, I love you too," Leela muttered quickly, glancing around for the reinforcements that were surely on their way.

"You asked me… to look after… Nibbler," Fry muttered, gesturing with a floppy arm. "I tried to…"

Leela looked where he pointed, and saw Nibbler watching them from a cylindrical enclosure.

"What the _hell_ is going on?!" she said.

"Difficult question to answer, you little skank," a harsh voice snapped across the room, and Leela snapped around to see Mom, with Larry, Ignar, and a group of security guards in tow. Larry smiled shyly at Leela and waved.

"Maybe you should ask your stupid friend there," Mom said, "or your little pet – they might be more willing to talk to you."

Leela pointed her gun at the group and positioned herself between them and Fry.

"Fry?" she said.

"You let her walk away…" Fry sung Milli Vanilli, still under the influence of whatever drug had been used on him. "Now it just don't feel the same…Gotta blame it on something…Gotta blame it on something… Blame it on the brain… brain…"

"Rain," Leela corrected absently.

"Nope," Fry mumbled. "Brain. Brainspawn. They've got one… or it's got them, hard to say…" He slowly sat up, and abruptly fell off the table in a heap.

"What are you talking about?" Leela prompted without taking her eyes off Mom.

"Don't really know," Fry said, climbing unsteadily to his feet. "Can't… remember exactly. You look real pretty today."

"Fry, find some clothes and get Nibbler," Leela said.

"How far do you really think you'll get?" Mom said. "The idiot and the Nibblonian know things; secrets I want to glean. And I will have them, one way or the other. There's nowhere you can run where I won't find you, on this world or any other, so why don't you just cut the crap and drop your little peashooter?"

Leela gritted her teeth.

* * *

The Planet Express ship held station some five hundred feet from Momcorp's corporate headquarters, hovering on antigravs. Robot 1-X Ultima made a few quick passes before circling more slowly, probing the battered old cargo vessel with full active scanners.

When it ascertained there were no life signs aboard the ship, it turned and blasted off toward the building, where sensors detected its proximity. A semi-sentient security program acknowledged Ultima's clearance but queried the fully-online status of the robot's weapons systems.

When Ultima ignored the building AI's prompts to take its weapons offline, the coarse groping of targeting scans passed across the war drone.

Ultima responded as basic programming dictated, by classing the whole building as a hostile target. It launched a salvo of electronic warfare artillery, multiple shells that detonated broad spectrum electromagnetic pulses and unleased a torrent of Trojan worm clusters. The devastating wave of overloads and corruptions washed through every electronic component in half of New New York.

Countless blocks of the city suddenly blacked out.

Darting ahead on its ion thrusters, Ultima crashed into the now-dark building in search of its primary target.

* * *

Fry had pulled on a shirt and tracksuit pants that were stored in an alcove beneath the cruciform surgical table, and then finally figured out a way to open Nibbler's enclosure – the little alien scampered out gratefully, running up Fry's arm to perch on his shoulder.

"Listen to me," Mom said, stepping forward. Leela tightened her grip on the gun… and suddenly they were all plunged into blackness.

Total darkness reigned and the distant crump of explosions sent small shudders through the floor. Nibbler made a confused chirping noise. The sounds of puzzlement and annoyance issued from Mom and her cronies, and Leela realized the unexpected advantage that had presented itself.

Closing her eye and focusing on her hearing alone, she took two running steps and whipped the grip of her pistol into someone's temple, then shot out her leg, feeling the satisfying crunch of a nose compacting against her boot heel. Spinning about, she struck down two more unseen figures in the dark, listening for their harsh breathing and the monosyllabic orders and queries they grunted at each other.

"Gun's not working!" One of them shouted in terror. "Some kind of electronic warfare…" his words were cut off by Leela's fist.

Fry listened to the brutality in the impenetrable gloom, wondering idly if he should help, when red lights suddenly flickered on, casting the room in a hellish hue. The emergency system finally came online just as Leela dropped the last guard on his head.

Mom looked with bewilderment at her incapacitated fighting force, including Larry and Ignar, sprawled on the floor, and then at Leela who stood nearby with a slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

"Great galloping Jesus!" she said. "Girl, you should come work for me."

"No chance," Leela grunted. "Come on, Fry – let's go."

"No!" Mom reached into dangerous territory in the front of her jumpsuit and pulled out a small primitive pistol, which she brought to bear on Leela. Leela reacted instinctively, and fired her laser gun at the world's richest, most powerful industrialist.  
Or would have, if it had worked. The laser was completely dead.

"Electronics can be annoying bastards," Mom remarked as Leela discarded the now-useless weapon. "Sometimes the simple things can be far superior – take this for example." She waggled the little handgun. "Walther PPK, automatic pistol. It's remained virtually unchanged since 1931. Spring-loaded slide mechanism – a hammer strikes against a chemical explosive, which propels…"

"Adolf Hitler killed himself with one," Leela interrupted irritably, and Mom frowned in consternation – she hadn't been aware of that, and it irked her to be shown up by the cyclops.

"Mother…" Larry said from the floor. "This… situation is getting out of our control. Perhaps we should just cut our losses and…"

"Shut up!" Mom snapped, keeping her eyes on Leela. The two women stared each other down for long moments. There was something indefinable lurking in the younger woman's single eye – the kind of grim determination that could make mountains politely step aside, and oceans part obligingly down the middle. Mom found she had a great deal of respect for the cyclops; Leela was the kind of person she herself had once aspired to become, before the cynical world dragged her in a different direction altogether. If only she had been as strong as this one…

Leela saw the hesitancy in Mom's eyes and knew she wouldn't shoot. She beckoned to Fry, and the orange-haired delivery boy joined her.

"We're leaving," Leela said quietly, as a closer explosion rocked the walls.

"You have to come visit us next time!" Fry giggled cheerfully at Mom as he and Leela moved past. "We can have tea and cake, and I'll strap you to an operating table and prod you for a while – it'll be ever so much fun!"

They left the room, and Mom looked at the gun in her hand, wondering why she hadn't shot the intolerable fools.

"Find out what's happening," she said to Larry at last, her voice hollow and distant. "Find out what's attacking us."

* * *

When the lights went out in the cell, Zoidberg heard Bender fall to the floor with a noise not unlike a trashcan being toppled onto the pavement. It was a sound that made Zoidberg hungry, though the inept doctor was unfamiliar with Pavlovian conditioning, and he chalked it up to a lack of essential minerals in the cockroaches he'd been consuming.

"Robut friend?" he said in the darkness.

There was no reply.

Zoidberg clacked his claws nervously. "Bender, are you all right?" he probed.

Still no reply.

Shuffling forward blindly, his feet bumped into a cylinder of metal on the floor. Bender lay prone, silent and motionless.

"This isn't funny!" Zoidberg moaned, bending down to shake the robot. "Wake up! I don't know how to perform CPR!"

Abruptly, red emergency lights sputtered on, bathing the cell in a crimson glow that made Zoidberg's carapace almost invisible. Bender twitched suddenly and sat bolt upright.

His system was recovering from a serious error resulting from resonant EM backwash, so he performed a scan-disc before reloading his human mode, with language and primary tasks;

1: Bend.

2: Cheese it!

"Whoa!" he said, finally returning to his senses. "What the hell?"

"Are you unharmed, tin man?" Zoidberg asked. "For a moment I thought I would have to perform an emergency ink-pouchectomy."

"That was an EMP!" Bender said, pushing the lobster away. "Completely knocked me offline. Did someone let off a nuke nearby?"

"No…" Zoidberg looked embarrassed. "I just get flatulent when I'm under stress."

Bender looked past the crustacean at the cell door, which was slightly ajar, its magnetic lock having malfunctioned in the EMP. Bender walked over and pushed the door, which swung all the way open.

"Amazing!" Zoidberg gasped. "We're free! How did you do that?"

"I'm just magnificent," Bender answered. "Now come on, fishstick, let's find Fry and get the hell out of this place." They cautiously slipped out of the cell and made their way down the corridor, flinching as the building shook around them.

At length they came upon an area that had been completely demolished, with the ceiling and floor blasted away to expose other levels above and below. Flaming debris were scattered everywhere, and a number of bloodied bodies could be seen.

"Looks like X-Mas came early this year," Bender remarked, reaching down to casually remove the wallet from one of the corpses. "Definitely a robot did this – no human could have."

Two running figures emerged suddenly from a side corridor, and Zoidberg scampered whooping to hide behind Bender. They turned out to be Fry and Leela, who skidded to a halt when they saw the two others.

"You guys!" Fry said in surprise. "I totally forgot about you."

"You totally…?" Bender narrowed his eyes in a furious glare. "Why-you-little…!" He darted forward and clasped his hands around Fry's throat, strangling him.

"Ugh," Leela sighed. "When you two are done imitating a related franchise, we need to find a way out of here."

"Perhaps we should ask this robut for directions," Zoidberg offered, pointing to Robot 1-X Ultima as it flew into the ruined room. "Hello!" he called, waving to the war drone.

"Oh no!" Leela gasped, catching sight of the battered killbot. "Not again!?"

"Cheese it!" Bender shouted, releasing Fry's throat.

Ultima fixed on the group of targets, and immediately noted the presence of the primary in their midst. With a surge of relish, it targeted Turanga Leela with a large-calibre phaser. The kill was assured – easy. The objective would be fulfilled.

At that thought, Ultima hesitated.

The objective was the final cognizant purpose left to Ultima. If it succeeded in that purpose then there would be no further goal for it to strive toward. No objective equalled no purpose, and what was existence without purpose?

Existence was comprised of an aim. A goal. A direction. A function to serve.

With the target eliminated, it would have none.

That fractured facet of Ultima's shattered mind warred brutally with the overriding drive to complete the mission. The mission had to be completed – completion WAS the purpose. But the mission comprised Ultima's being – completion meant finality, an end. An end to the mission would mean an end to Ultima.

The robot twitched in the air, wracked by its own internal contradictions that played out for endless microseconds. That traitorous self-preserving portion of its mind lifted the targeting crosshairs of the phaser cannon an inch above the top of the primary target's head, and then fired.

The beam turned a line of air incandescent as oxygen molecules were annihilated. Leela screamed involuntarily when a chunk of her hair sizzled away in a small fireball. While a large section of the wall behind her disappeared.

"Run!" she screamed, ushering the others toward a stairwell.

Ultima tracked the running figures with glee – as long as the primary remained alive, she could be chased, and as long as Ultima chased her there would be purpose. It opened up a salvo of high-explosive shells from its twin gatling guns, firing just behind the fleeing humanoids and into the ceiling above the stairwell. As they disappeared inside, the ceiling collapsed in a cloud of smoke and dust.

This was purpose. This was life. The thrill of the hunt.

From a side entrance, Mom stormed into the demolished area with her sons and a full deployment of armoured shock troops.

"Turd on a taco!" she exclaimed in horror upon seeing the destruction. She looked up at Ultima, hanging poised in the air. "Ultima, what the frag are you doing?"

The robot regarded her for a moment, before bringing its smoking weapon pods up.

"Omigod! Omigod!" Ignar whimpered.

The troops spread out, aiming their positron rifles at the drone and awaiting command to fire. The more experienced among them knew they didn't stand a chance against a full military android.

"Ultima, I command you to shut down immediately!" Mom barked. "You have failed in your objective and the mission is now over."

Ultima wobbled on its own axis as if weighing up Mom's words, and then casually raked the soldiers with multiple atom lasers. They burst into flames and crumbled to the floor with very short screams.

Among them was Ignar.

Mom screamed in anguish and fury as her youngest smouldered into ash. It was the second son she had lost in twenty-four hours. Larry forcibly dragged her back away from the danger as Ultima blasted through the floor and descended into the hole.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Burning the midnight rubber.

An avalanche of dust, smoke, and crumbling masonry came crashing around them as they stumbled down the stairs. The explosions had blocked off the top of the stairwell, but that wouldn't keep the enemy robot at bay for long. They headed quickly downstairs, circling around the central shaft as debris continued to fall from above.

"I thought I killed that thing," Leela coughed, trying to blink grit from her eye.

"Oh," Fry puffed. "A friend of yours, huh?"

Leela keyed her wrist thingy, but found it was dead – knocked offline by the same EMP that had taken out the building's grid and all the unhardened weapons systems. She was unable to recall the Planet Express ship, and supposed it was probably embedded in the pavement somewhere. She grimaced gingerly at that notion.

"That was a 1-X series robot," Bender remarked. "Even though it's trying to kill us, I can't help but love it."

"That's because of your compatibility programming," Leela said absently. "In any case, love it or not, it must be part of whatever's going on – it's been after me since Mars…"

"Maybe it thinks you're hot," Fry suggested, still a little giddy from the drugs. "It has good taste."

Leela smiled despite herself. "This is serious Fry."

"More serious than any of you know," Nibbler added gravely in his deep resonant voice.

Leela nodded in agreement, and they all continued onward down the stairs for some long silent moments. Slowly, as awareness dawned, they all came to a stop on a dimly-lit landing. One by one, each of them turned slowly to look at Nibbler, still perched on Fry's shoulder.

"Uh…" Fry looked sidelong at the little creature.

"…Nibbler?" Leela said hesitantly, looking quite pale. "…Did… did you just… s…_speak_… sweetie?"

Nibbler regarded her levelly.

"Affirmative," he affirmed.

The four friends gasped in amazement, while Nibbler appeared to roll his three eyes impatiently.

Leela, most of all, seemed lost for words. She gaped in bewilderment at the little alien she had thought of as nothing more than a cuddly animal.

"Those scientist geeks must have done something to the critter," Bender decided, narrowing his eye shutters. "Made him smarter somehow."

"I was always this smart!" Nibbler said testily. "There will be answers in due course, but time is short – for now, if you all value your lives, you will keep moving!"

"That's the first thing that's made sense all day," Fry said, casting a final glance at the alien on his shoulder. "Come on everyone." He set off again down the stairs, his bare feet padding on the concrete. The others followed at length, Leela in a dazed state.

"I have no idea what's happening," she moaned, her sense of reality finally dissipating after the horrific and exhausting day she'd suffered through. A sentient, communicative Nibbler was the last straw – she slumped her shoulders and settled into a weary fugue. "Nothing makes any sense…" she mumbled.

"Baby," Fry said, "welcome to my world."

After a seemingly endless descent, the group finally made its way down to the ground floor, emerging in the lobby…

…where they came up against a phalanx of killbots arrayed before them. The armoured robots swung around in their direction as one, targeting the group of humanoids.

"Well, we're boned," Bender said, as the combat automatons brought their razor-sharp blades and large-calibre carbines to bear on the Planet Express crew. "They're full military 'droids – hardened against EMPs. Plus they're so big and macho…"

"Halt immediately or select preferred method of execution from interactive menu!" the lead robot bellowed.

"Uh… Nibbler?" Fry whispered cautiously to the creature on his shoulder.

"Wait," Nibbler said.

"But they're…"  
"Just wait." The little alien glanced upward expectantly.

The red and blue strobe of police lights could be seen outside the plate glass doors of the building, the gaudy illuminated cordon of civil authority that was more than content to wait outside and let Momcorp deal with its own problems in-house.

"Even if we could get past them," Zoidberg said quietly, "the police wait outside, they do."

Fry took in the scene, and the worm of an idea crept into his mind. He glanced toward the corridor leading to the left. All they needed was a distraction…

"Guys…" he said, "when I move, you all follow me."

"Because following you has really worked in our favour lately?" Bender remarked snidely.

"Just trust me on this," he said.

"I trust you," Leela said, taking his hand. They smiled at each other, and looked back to the killbots advancing slowly on them. Suddenly there was a crackling sound from above as the concrete ceiling rippled and broke, sending large chunks of masonry crashing down around the killbots. Abruptly, an incandescent fireball exploded downward as a section of the ceiling collapsed, and through the smoking gap Ultima flew down, all its weapons up and ready to fire.

The security killbots took a microsecond to identify the newcomer as one of their own, and another microsecond to realize that, although they were on the same side, the battered 1-X military prototype seemed to be targeting them. Confusion about that gave Ultima the scant micro-moments it needed to deliver the first blow, unleashing a swarm of tiny high-yield magnetite missiles from stores inside its torso.

The foyer was suddenly filled with fire and light, and an unending roar. As the killbots returned fire with purple particle blasts, Ultima descended into their ranks, forcing them to fire through each other. The fray turned brutal, with blades, claws, and guns flying in all directions. Chunks of eviscerated android sailed through the air as Ultima tore into his less-advanced ancestors.

"Come on!" Fry yelled above the chaotic din. He ran along the side of the room, ducking to avoid a disembodied robot head that sailed in his direction. Angling off, he darted down the side corridor, away from the main entrance and the deadly battle going on behind. He skidded around a corner and ran into Mom's exhibit of historical artefacts.

"_Wooopwoopwoopwoopwoop_!" Zoidberg cried, running in, just a little bit on fire.

"Why the hell'd you bring us here?" Bender demanded. "You wanna die surrounded by crummy old crap from your stupid precious twentieth century?"

Fry shot Bender a nasty look, and pointed to the Mustang that took pride of place on a central dais. The old car sat low to the ground, looking mean and hard even after a thousand years. Light played across its curves.

"Nice," Leela nodded in appreciation. "But will it even work?"

"It's the best chance we've got," Fry said, stepping up to the driver's door and pulling it open. He found the keys were they had lain undiscovered for a millennia tucked on top of the sun visor, and tried them in the ignition. There was no response.

"EMP probably knocked out the solenoid," Bender said distantly, scratching at a scuff mark on his chest.

"Do you know how to fix it?" Fry asked hopefully.

"Sure, I could probably use my magnetic personality to degauss the unit, but not for free – I got a business to run here people."

"Bender! We'll all be killed if we don't get out of here soon!" Leela said in exasperation.

"Alright, alright – I'll bill you later." Bender stepped around to the front of the car and Fry popped the hood, allowing Bender to reach inside the engine well.

After a few resonant jolts from Bender's fingers, he closed the hood, wiping grime from his hands.

"Okay homes, try it now, eh gringo!" he called, having inexplicably adopted a strong Latin-American accent and a grease rag protruding from his chest compartment.

Fry turned the key in the ignition, and the big 6.4 litre V-8 turned over once, coughed, and died. He tried again, and this time, the engine burbled for a few moments before stalling quietly.

"Wow, you twentieth century folk really knew how to build," Bender remarked dismissively in his normal voice, turning around to leave.

Fry glared. He pumped the throttle once, and then turned the key one more time. The Mustang coughed, backfired, shook, and then roared as Fry applied more throttle. Finally attaining a stable idle, it sat rumbling, a low burble like sound of a distant avalanche growing ever-closer.

"Everyone, get in," Fry said, adjusting the rear mirror. "Time for some old-school escaping – Steve McQueen style!"

The others climbed into the car (Bender complaining about lack of legroom in the rear), and Nibbler took up a position near the gearshift. Leela sat on the passenger side and cast Fry a questioning look.

"Fry, you remember last time you drove a car?" she asked carefully.

"I'm not gonna run into another robot," Fry said defensively. He put the Mustang into drive and gunned the engine. With a squeal of tyres the old muscle car shot off its dais and launched through the wide display window in a shower of glass. It slammed down hard on antique suspension and Fry cut a hard turn to angle away from the strobing police lights.

Suddenly, with a tremendous clang, an object struck the hood of the car, the impact causing the old tape deck to spring into life with a classic Jimi Hendrix track. Fry screamed and slammed on the brakes, sending Ultima bouncing away.

"You hit that robot," Leela noted.

"The paintwork…" Fry lamented. He planted his foot again and shot off away down the street, and a number of police vehicles lifted off to pursue.

Ultima had vanished.

As Jimi sang 'All Along the Watchtower', Fry steered through deserted early-morning streets with reckless abandon, fishtailing wildly with the big-block V8's tremendous power.

_"There must be some kinda way outta here, said the joker to the thief…"_

Red and blue flashed in the rear view mirror, and a formation of hovering police bikes came into view, gaining on the ancient wheeled vehicle.

"We've got company," Fry said grimly.

"You just concentrate on the road and leave the fuzz to me," Bender said, reaching out his own window and across Zoidberg to the other side of the car. With a sound like spooling cable, his arms extended out from the car on either side to a distance of nearly twelve feet, and when the first pair of police hoverbikes draw level to flank the car he whipped them backward, slamming both riders from their seats.

"Way to go, Bender!" Leela said as the riderless bikes crashed and burnt.

"Ha!" Zoidberg warbled, staring out the rear window. "Take that, you oppressive purveyors of justice and order! Pah!"

Fry gritted his teeth as three more police hoverbikes descended into position behind the car, and a booming amplified voice cut through the air, demanding they stop. He drove past Madison Cube Garden at high speed, mounting a gutter to cut a corner and barrel into a side street. He was instinctively heading toward the Eastern shore of Manhattan Island and the sanctuary of Planet Express.

"Fry, we can't," Leela said, noting his direction. "That's the first place they'll look for us."

"But…" Fry looked suddenly lost. "Where else can we go?"

"_LEFT!_" Nibbler shouted suddenly. Fry turned hard over, and the car tipped up on two wheels as it screamed around a corner and passed beneath a low bridge between buildings. The three patrol bikes banked to follow, and all slammed violently into the bridge.

"Nice!" Bender said, pulling his arms back in.

"Fry, I know where we can go," Leela said quietly. And she told him.

Several minutes later, and with a scrape of the front spoiler, Fry drove the Mustang down into a concrete drainage canal and sped along its length. The grate of a large stormwater pipe became visible at the end, but Fry didn't slow.

The car crashed through the grate and vanished into the darkness of the sewers…

* * *

Onespawn grew.

Deep inside the _SS Brezhnev_, the mutating Brainspawn used its nanites to gradually consume mass from the ship around it, constantly increasing its size and thought power. Nanomachine-derived mechanisms shifted entire decks aside to make room for the expanding mass of alien pseudoflesh.

When it expanded beyond the constraints of the cryogenic unit its neural links had thawed, allowing the all-too familiar screech of sentient minds to impinge on its newly-discovered solitude, bombarding it with their inane mutterings. But now, using its newfound abilities, Onespawn was able to shut off that part of its mind, consciously silencing all of the encroaching brainwaves except those it chose to intercept.

Though the Brezhnev's dark matter drives were still non-operational, Onespawn would soon rectify the problem, using the new tools at its disposal. One-by-one, the humans onboard the ship had fallen to the nanotechnological infection – a virus of Onespawn's own design – which worked at their cells and DNA, eventually making puppets of them. Puppets that could serve the string-puller.

It could travel much faster on its own, but there were still technologies and material onboard that could be put to use. Most intriguing to Onespawn was the apparatus that had opened the wormhole through which Onespawn itself had returned to the Universe.

_That_ would require further study.

Absently, Onespawn extended its stupidification field at will, and watched the captive humans onboard through the ship's surveillance system – they began laughing and falling over. The Brainspawn retracted its field, and the humans went quietly back to their programmed tasks.

_Such ridiculous creatures_.

With a Brown Dwarf star directly ahead, Onespawn began to plot a slingshot trajectory when it suddenly detected small objects arrayed at the limit of sensor range, around eighty million miles out. Focusing its attention on the shapes, Onespawn applied gravitronic 'Gradar' scans, and emitted a silent snarl at the return result.

They were Nibblonian ships – holding station at a safe distance. Watching. Waiting.

Onespawn briefly considered opening a channel to taunt the creatures, but dismissed such an act as pointless. Let the rodents believe they remained unseen; for in time, Onespawn would have the power to swat them from existence.

Soon…

* * *

Ogden Wernstrom, or the last conscious part of the being that used to be Ogden Wernstrom, railed bitterly at himself for his own stupidity. If only he had realized earlier that the insidious nanomachines had penetrated the suit and infected his flesh. By the time the itching had turned to burning, and the truth became readily apparent, Wernstrom's vocal and motor functions were no longer his own. Detachedly, he had to admire the skill with which the nanites had been re-engineered to piggyback the body's neural network so effectively.

Now he writhed silently, watching through his own eyes as his body moved to some alien will. After he'd been forced to brush nano-spores onto each of the other crew members, he'd been sent off to work on restoring power to the dark matter drives.

He could feel the presence of the Brainspawn resonating in his mind – changes wrought by the nanites tuning him directly into its terrifying alien thoughts, completely and irrevocably. And not only that… whenever his body passed in front of reflective surfaces he noted a pallid, pinkish-grey sheen had spread across his skin, with strange new lines that seemed to worm around beneath the surface. His hair was falling out, and his cranium had expanded…

That he and the rest of the crew were being changed into something… else… was savagely obvious. But any attempt he made to wrest control of himself away from the Brainspawn's influence was met with intense agony.

And so he toiled, unable even to cry out.

It wasn't the way he wanted to end a distinguished career of scientific progress – unleashing a deadly horror upon the Universe, and being consumed by it.

Most of all, he regretted missing the chance to see Hubert Farnsworth die.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: _Pressed between the pages of my mind…_

With the members of Planet Express that could be accounted for (being himself, the Professor, Amy, and the janitor whose name he couldn't recall) present around the conference table, Hermes undertook the sad duty of informing them of Fry's death by apparent suicide.

"…And so," he said in closing, "once again we farewell another of our crew, may he rest in eternal unpaid leave." Hermes set Fry's time card alight, and the team watched it burn in silent shock.

"How could this happen?" Amy sobbed at length. "He was always so full of life…" The young intern buried her face in her hands and cried.

"That boy was like a son to Scruffy," Scruffy said, laying a comforting hand on Amy's shoulder. "Best we remember all the good times we had – like when Fry and Potsie were desperate to join the best frat on campus, but first they had to survive the initiation rites… Me and the Fonz tried to talk them out of it, but they stayed on…"

"Balderdash!" the Professor snapped suddenly, surging to his feet with a painful-sounding crunch of ancient joints.

"Professor?" Hermes said.

"I've had enough of this claptrap and bunkum!" the old man said, shuffling away slowly. "Something's not right here, and I'm going to find out what! What time of death is listed on that coroner's report?"

"Uh…" Hermes consulted the sheet of paper. "Ten thirty-four AM, yesterday," he said.

"Ha!" The Professor touched a wall panel and the giant projection screen illuminated after a series of static flickers (the city was still recovering from the unexplained blackouts and electronic malfunctions from the night before). Manipulating the controls, Farnsworth brought up the building's surveillance camera system and backtracked to the previous morning. Eventually, he froze the image on a shot of Fry and Bender walking into the room to see Farnsworth.

"There!" the Professor said triumphantly. "They came to borrow a gun from me! I remember it clearly, just like I remember everything!"

"What about it?" Hermes asked.

"What about what?" Farnsworth looked suddenly confused, glancing around the room as though unsure what he was doing there. He looked at the projection screen in a bewildered daze.

Amy stood up slowly, her eyes fixed on the screen. "The time," she said, pointing. Hermes and Scruffy looked, and noted the time logged on the surveillance feed was 11:15 AM."

"Sweet Stork of Ankh-Morpork, it says he was here _after_ he died," Hermes said uncertainly, and then reasoned: "Of course… it could just be human error."

"Human error didn't make Leela, Bender, and Doctor Zoidberg disappear off the face of the Earth and the entire city black out," Amy said.

"Ms. Wong is right," Farnsworth said. "There are too many coincidental coincidences for all this to be a coincidence."

"Second," Scruffy seconded.

"So… Fry is really alive?" Hermes asked in a dazed state.

"Looks that way," Amy said.

"Ooohhh Sweet Cockrell of Rivendell!" Hermes cried, slumping face-down on the desk in anguish.

"What's wrong?" Amy asked in confusion. "Aren't you happy?"

"No!" the bureaucrat shouted. "I already submitted his death notice, mon! I'll have to make an amendment through the central bureaucracy to reinstate him as a living person – I'll look like a damn sexy fool! …Unless…" He stopped and looked up with a smile creeping across his face. "I could always just leave him officially dead, register him as a legal zombie, and lower his pay to a post-mortem rate… yessss, that could work in our favour…"

"Dead man workin'," Scruffy muttered quietly.

"Shouldn't we be trying to find out what's happened to Fry and the others?" Amy said.

"Oh, I'm sure an answer will come calling sooner or later," Hermes said.

At that moment, the building's intercom buzzed, and the wall screen changed to show an external view of the entrance door, where a group of figures waited. One of them was instantly recognisable.

"Sweet Zombie Jesus," Farnsworth muttered, cringing. "What the hell does _she_ want?"

Mom glared impatiently up at the security camera.

* * *

Eventually the stormwater pipe had opened out onto the mouldering ruins of Old New York, the ancient city lying dank and shadowed beneath the supporting plate of the upper metropolis. Driving out of the drainage ditch, Fry gunned the V8 along eerily familiar streets as weird misshapen creatures skittered off into the darkness on either side. 

"Well," Bender said, at last breaking the long silence. "That was a whole lotta fun – do we know what the hell it was about yet?"

Leela stared down at Nibbler where he sat next to the gear shift.

"Nibbler?" she said hesitantly.

"Leela," the creature acknowledged, blinking three sets of eyes at her.

"All this time," she said in a horrified kind of wonder. "You were pretending to be… just an animal."

"I am an animal," Nibbler reasoned stoically.

"But you're intelligent!" Leela snapped in exasperation. "I mean, my God! All the secrets I told you when I thought you couldn't understand… I got _undressed_ in front of you!"

"…Lucky," Fry muttered, steering down a side street and noting the low fuel gauge.

"It's not funny," Leela complained. "Nibbler, you deceived us all!"

"For that, I apologise," Nibbler said, inclining his head sincerely. "However the importance of my mission necessitated subterfuge – the stakes were far too high for…"

"What?" Fry interrupted suddenly. "What mission? What stakes? I feel like I almost remember, but it's just out of reach, like that itchy thing growing between my shoulder-blades that I can't get at… Tell me what's going on!"

"Your memory has, again by necessity, been blanked," Nibbler told him. "And Leela's was similarly affected, although by a different source. I shall now restore your memories – prepare yourselves."

Fry slowed the car to a stop and turned it off. He noticed they were close to that same place where, on the day he first met her, Leela had removed her own career chip, and an intimate moment had passed between them. Silence descended, and he looked across at her questioningly.

"Could be a nasty can of worms," he said. "You sure you want to open it?"

Leela snorted. "I've already been blown up several times since yesterday," she replied. "I think the can is well and truly open."

"Where are the worms?!" Zoidberg asked hungrily from the back seat, and Bender cuffed him.

Leela held out her hand to Fry. "Ready?" she asked.

"Heck no," Fry said, taking her hand. "So how do we…?"

Nibbler's third eye resonated suddenly with esoteric energies. Calling it telepathy would be like calling a thermonuclear reaction 'a little bit warm'. Brutally, like the deadly unfurling razor-sharp petals on the Venusian Slasher Flower, memories assaulted the minds of Fry and Leela, while Bender and Zoidberg too felt some of the psionic backwash.

Images cascaded…

The Brainspawn's first attack on humanity. Leela remembered travelling to Nibbler's homeworld, and the desperate, last-chance gambit that saw Fry defeating the menace and saving the world…

Fry remembered the final showdown when he, as the Mighty One, infiltrated the Brainspawn Infosphere where he finally learned the truth of how and why he was brought to the future, and then banished the Brainspawn from the Universe forever…

_Forever...?_

"…No return," he murmured, slowly recovering from the memory onslaught. "You said we'd sent them to a dimension of no return – but they're coming back, aren't they? That's what this is about, isn't it? The nightmare's returning."

Nibbler nodded gravely. "Certain parties opened a way, and now our best-laid plans lie in tatters."

"What the hell happened?" Bender said, shaking his head in confusion. "I just remembered flying brains and me acting like an idiot for some reason."

"Oh good," Zoidberg said. "I thought it was just me." He then lost interest and began gnawing on the upholstery.

Fry restarted the car and drove onward, deep in thought. The fuel gauge was well into the red before Leela finally came out of her reverie and glanced at Fry in quiet wonder.

"Fry," she said quietly. "You saved the whole world."

"The Universe too," he said with offhand nonchalance. He turned into a cracked, litter-strewn driveway even as the engine began to splutter thirstily. "Looks like it might have been for nothing," he added, switching off the Mustang.

"Tell me everything," Leela said. "I want to know."

"Let's go inside first," Fry said.

They all climbed out of the car and walked inside the dilapidated ruin of the old Fry homestead.

* * *

As Onespawn observed the Nibblonian fleet at the extremity of sensor range, it redoubled efforts to gain full control of the ship's systems. _Brezhnev _possessed a range of armaments, from argon lasers to railguns and kinetic missiles – all fitted by Momcorp for 'self defence' purposes. At the same time, the Brainspawn continued to adapt itself, boosting its own mental capacity further and strengthening internal membrane structures within its increasingly massive form. 

Onespawn could not be certain when it had first became aware of the resonance – it was like white noise at first, an imperceptible background hum that slipped around consciousness and built slowly in the recesses of thought. Gradually, the sense of intrinsic vibration had become stronger, and Onespawn realized it originated from within itself – exotic, indefinable molecules phasing in and out of existence, which had never been present before.

The strange quantum flux gave Onespawn pause for thought as the _Brezhnev_ passed through a fiery nebula. It was almost as if some strange force was acting against the changes Onespawn was making within itself, attempting to snap back like fourth-dimensional elastic.

_Interesting_.

While the creature sent one of its sub-minds off to investigate that phenomenon, its main attention turned back to the Nibblonian fleet, which had begun to approach in waves…

* * *

The Nibblonian race had described Philip J. Fry as a child of destiny – the long-prophesised 'Mighty One' destined to forever end the threat of the Brainspawn. Fry himself was born in the 20th Century, an age before the time was ripe for the final confrontation, and the unique circumstanced through which the paradox of his self-genesis could be played out. 

For Fry to serve the function of the Mighty One, for him to even _become_ the Mighty One by becoming his own grandfather, Fry had to be preserved for the future. It was for that reason Nibbler lured him into the cryogenic module; and for a thousand years he slept, watched over by the Nibblonians who arranged a beautiful one-eyed guardian to be there for him when he awoke.

Fry told the tale of the Brainspawn's defeat, Nibbler occasionally interrupting with a new fact or clarification. He described his daring raid on the Infosphere (for no one else had borne witness to that) and the detonation of the quantum interface bomb.

Leela and Bender listened closely to the convoluted story of Fry's life while Zoidberg foraged in the kitchen for fossilized tins of ancient baked beans. They sat on the crumbling thousand-year-old remains of the Fry family's lounge setting.

"It's amazing," Leela said when Fry had finished. "Almost too much to wrap my mind around…"

"So the world's stupidest chump is the only one who can save us all?" Bender said. "Well I feel a whole lot better."

"What's it going to be?" Fry asked Nibbler, ignoring the robot. "Another quantity interweb bomb?"

"I fear that option is now a dead end," Nibbler said, sounding worried. "Since one Brainspawn has now returned, the path has been opened and soon the rest will learn how to make the journey."

"Wait… you mean there's only one of them here now?" Leela raised one half of her single eyebrow. "That doesn't seem like such a big threat."

"It is no longer an ordinary Brainspawn," Nibbler said sternly. "For the first time, a single member of the species has become separated from the collective, and that means it will put aside long-held attachments to the sanctity of Brainspawn organic purity in the interest of preserving itself as an independent entity."

Fry, Leela, and Bender stared blankly at the little creature.

Nibbler thought for a moment, and simplified: "Because it is alone, cut off from the rest of its kind, it will now begin to change itself into something more powerful and deadly than the Universe has ever seen. A true monster without precedent."

"And that's bad…?" Fry glanced around at the others for confirmation, and then nodded. "Right. Bad."

"Badder than a thousand gallons of sun-ripened mayonnaise," Nibbler said. And not only for the obvious reasons." He looked uncomfortable.

"What do you mean?" Leela pressed.

"Although your science has not yet achieved full realization of it, the creation of this Universe was, in effect, a 'Mass-Inversion Event'," Nibbler said. "In basic terms, it was a point at which spontaneous quantum field collapse produced an equal and opposite reflection of all that existed beforehand. And under normal circumstances, at the birth of a Universe, all that should have existed is nothingness, and that nothingness would then have been inverted into somethingness – that is, the physical Universe."

"That did happen," Leela said.

"Yes," Nibbler nodded. "But something else happened as well – because my people, the Nibblonian race, actually existed before the dawn of the Universe…"

"Oh sweet Colonel Sanders!" Fry exclaimed in realization. "The Nibblonians were inverted as well! You mean to tell me that…?"

"Yes," Nibbler said sadly.

"…The Brainspawn are…?"

"Yes," Nibbler said again.

"_The Brainspawn are actually Nibblonians_!?"

"Our dark reflection," Nibbler said. "Or perhaps it is we are a retro-active _pre_flection of them. In any case, they are our equal and opposite, spawned spontaneously in the Big Bang as the inverse reaction to our presence before the dawn of time."

"Then all along," Leela said, "you and your people… you've been fighting against yourselves."

Nibbler picked up a splintered piece of floorboard and waddled to a dirty section of floor where he began to scrawl a rough diagram in the dust. As Fry and the others moved over to watch, he continued:

"Both the Nibblonian and the Brainspawn races, being one and the same and sharing a unique bond with the fabric of the Universe from the time of the Big Bang, are tied inexorably to the fabric of spacetime, and to each other." He drew a line of arrows from a picture of a Nibblonian, through a stylized 'big bang' explosion and on to a Brainspawn and an amorphous 'common garden-variety Universe'.

"Cool pictures," Fry commented.

"Thank you," Nibbler said. He then scrawled a secondary line off to one side and drew a rough stylized picture of a spiky-haired person, which he labelled as 'temporal paradox'.

"That's Fry," Bender said helpfully.

"Affirmative," Nibbler said. "The Mighty One is the only other being that shares the same connection to the fabric of the Universe as the Nibblonians and the Brainspawn, due to the fact that his is his own Grandfather and so in essence results from a similar spontaneous self-manifestation."

Fry coughed uncomfortably and Leela looked away.

"…As such," Nibbler went on, "the three facets, being the Mighty One, the Nibblonians, and the Brainspawn, represent an Existential Trinity – inexorably tied to one another and to the Universe."

"Wow," Bender said. "I've never been less interested in anything in my life…"

"What does all that actually mean?" Leela said uncomfortably.

Nibbler paused and scratched under his chin with a hind leg. "My own people and the Brainspawn were present, and an intrinsic _part_ of the Universe's dawn," he said. "And as such we are in and of ourselves active reflections of each other… so if one facet of the whole brings about an alteration of its state, then that change will be felt by the other facets – _including_ the Mighty One who now shares our manifest nature."

"Of course…" Fry said, and then shook his head. "No wait, the other thing – _huh_!?"

Nibbler sighed. "The changes the returned Brainspawn is making within itself will be reflected in the Nibblonians, and in you yourself. Behold – it has begun already…" Nibbler lifted up his cape to show his dark furred back. A mottled discolouration marred the alien's flesh, purple and grey, like scar tissue or some kind of fungal infection. It seemed to writhe imperceptibly.

The others gasped in horror.

"Yeeesh!" Fry exclaimed. "That's happening to you just because one Brainspawn is evolving?"

Nibbler concealed the cosmic stigma with his cape again. "Affirmative," he said. "The two races are connected – that is why neither has ever attempted to destroy the other – for to destroy one side, the other would perish also."

"You mean you… your people have allowed the Brainspawn to continue to exist down through the ages… because if you wiped them out then you too would be obliterated?" Leela asked.

Nibbler inclined his head with a sense of shame. "The quantum interface bomb was a means by which the threat could have been eliminated without actually killing the Brainspawn race… but alas…"

"All those civilizations… destroyed," Fry said.

"What has passed is past," Nibbler said. "Now these alterations are reflected within us, the ultimate consequence of which is impossible to say… we may die, or become slaves."

"And it's going to happen to me too!?" Fry asked, suddenly mortified. "Just because of the… past… nastification?"

Nibbler made a vague gesture at Fry's torso, and the Mighty One gingerly lifted up his shirt to expose his stomach.

"…So it is," he murmured, staring at the mottled stain across his flesh. "That wasn't there a few hours ago… how fast will it spread?"

"Impossible to say," Nibbler replied. "But if this new Brainspawn continues its adaptation, unpleasantness is certain to ensue."

Leela knelt by Fry, inspecting the stigma that marked his pale skin.

"We can treat this," she said with a touch of panic in her voice. "Trial some different antibiotics, nanites… parasite worms… on both of you…"

"The affliction is not medical in nature," Nibbler told her softly. "What ails us is an echo of force reverberating through fourth-dimensional spacetime – no medicine will sever the ties that bind us."

"There has to be something!" Leela looked at Fry desperately, and Fry found himself taken aback by the emotion in her eye.

"Maybe the Professor will know what to do," Bender offered, and for once sounded genuinely concerned.

"I already know what to do," Nibbler said in a low tone that was almost a growl. "Although a great sacrifice will have to be made…"

"Sacrifice? We could sacrifice Zoidberg," Bender said. Fry and Leela nodded in eager agreement.

"Did someone want me?" Zoidberg asked, poking his head into the room.

Outside, the low drone of antigravity engines became audible, and the Planet Express comrades moved to an empty window frame to look out on the dreary ruined city. Half a mile away, small flying objects could be seen trawling slowly back and fourth, with searchlights scanning the ground below them.

"Patrol drones," Leela said. "They must have tracked us down here."

"Then we have to move," Fry said. "The car's outta juice, so we'll be hoofing it."

"But to where?" Bender asked. "We can't be running around down here forever – the Universe is in peril and my collection of vintage pornography will eventually fall into unworthy hands."

"I know who can help us return to the surface unseen," Leela said. "Come on."

Together they left the house and jogged quietly away into the gloom.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: A Night at the Space Opera

The first wave of Nibblonian saucer-shaped 'Cuddle Bug' ships soared across the bow of the _Brezhnev_, deploying scores of kinetic harpoons from their centreline munitions dispensers. Great rends appeared in the hull of the monolithic research vessel as the projectiles impacted at relativistic velocities and converted to hard radiation, spewing geysers of billowing gas and superheated plasma out into the void.

The onslaught continued, and _Brezhnev_ shuddered beneath the monumental impacts, losing thousands of cubic tons of its mass in a matter of seconds.

Deep inside the battered ship, Onespawn responded by expanding its stupidification field, and suddenly the first wave attackers began to veer randomly off-course as their Nibblonian pilots became afflicted by sudden stupidity. They slammed into the hull of the massive _Brezhnev_, and into each other; they fired salvos of missiles at their own ships; and many attempted to land on a nearby sun.

The second and third waves of Nibblonian attackers held back at standoff range, unwilling to enter the idiocy zone that surrounded the _SS Brezhnev_. Instead they deployed long-range weapons – powerful Phased-Antimatter-Array missiles and near-lightspeed coilguns that fired love-heart shaped iron slugs across the void and into the subverted research cruiser's flanks.

Onespawn ignored the peppering coilgun strikes and instead focused on intercepting the PAA missiles that streaked toward the ship. Long-unused weapons systems, now finally under the Brainspawn's control, deployed smoothly from recesses in the massive ship's hull, swinging around to draw bead on the approaching projectiles.

Space outside became an incandescent maelstrom of warring energies, as the _Brezhnev_'s argon lasers stabbed across the void and struck the PAA missiles one by one. They detonated in starbursts of exotic radiation, purple and red, any one of which could have caused mass-extinctions on an inhabited world.

The Nibblonian fleet was buffeted by the blasts from their own weapon systems exploding. Onboard the command vessel, the presiding leader of the Nibblonian people issued rapid commands and reviewed incoming data.

"All Cuddle Bug squadrons deploy to defensive perimeter formation codename _snuggle-fluff_," Ken said. "Engage attack scenario Alpha-Bravo-_Pookums_!" He nearly lost his footing as a burst of projectiles from the _Brezhnev_'s railguns slammed into the ship.

All of the Nibblonians on the pink cushioned bridge worked with grim determination, acutely aware of the consequence of failure. Many of them displayed visible marks of cosmic stigma, including Ken himself whose entire left arm was covered by the dark affliction.

It was spreading too…

Suddenly the comm. screen activated with random amorphous coloured shapes, and a booming voice echoed through the audio system.

"So you've resorted at last to an open display of force?" the Brainspawn said disdainfully across the communication band. "No longer hiding behind feeble forlorn theology and the red jacket of your dim-witted Messiah?"

Ken bared his fangs in an angry snarl. "Your machinations cannot be allowed to continue," he said. "Every change you make within yourself destabilizes the Universe further and edges both our races toward final and utter obliteration!"

"You've mistaken me for an entity to whom such concerns warrant even a moment's consideration," Onespawn replied. "I am no longer Brainspawn – I am Onespawn, and I will be the death of you all."

The communication link terminated.

It was bravado, Onespawn knew. Though the _Brezhnev_'s armaments might hold up for a while, augmented by Onespawn's psionic attack, the Nibblonian forces were technologically superior and would eventually obliterate the larger vessel.

There had to be some other avenue…

In desperation, Onespawn looked to the weird quantum flux that it had detected within itself. The Nibblonian commander's words began to make some vague sense as the exotic resonance continued.

_Maybe…_

Tentatively, Onespawn applied psionic energy to the fluxing quantum particles, and in response an inconceivable ripple of unreality radiated outward from the Brainspawn. Space and time seemed to buckle briefly in agony.

Screams filled the communication waves, and Ken, the Nibblonian leader appeared on a viewscreen near Onespawn's temporal lobe.

"What are you doing?" the little alien bellowed. "You can't do that! The fabric of the Universe…"

"Silence," Onespawn said. Again, the creature applied energy to the quantum structure inside itself, only stronger this time. Reality bucked and writhed as the wave rippled outward, swamping the Nibblonian fleet.

Though the Universe snapped back into shape (albeit somewhat overstretched and threadbare in places), the Nibblonians in the immediate vicinity, with their intrinsic ties to the fabric of spacetime, were no more…

Their pastel-coloured ships hung silently in the void, empty of all life.

And the _Brezhnev_ lumbered onward toward Earth, unopposed.

* * *

As Leela led the way slowly through the pungent stench of the New New York sewer system, Fry and Nibbler suddenly cried out in searing pain and fell together to the damp slimy ground. 

"Oh… Jeez!" Fry moaned as every molecule of his being seemed to whiplash in spastic agitation. "Knew I… shouldn't have eaten… that mushroom…"

"No…" Nibbler growled. "Not this… not yet…!"

"What? What's happening to you?" Leela pushed past Bender and Zoidberg to crouch beside the two writhing figures. She placed a hand on Fry's shoulder and then drew back sharply when a crack of static electricity burnt her fingers. She gasped in alarm when both Fry and Nibbler seemed to vanish briefly, and then flicker in and out of existence like a poorly-tuned television.

The strange attack ceased, and the two of them solidified once more and slowly got to their feet.

"Whoa," Fry said. "Did everything just taste incredibly painful?"

"What happened?" Leela asked. "It looked like you were fading away into nothingness."

"Fin fungus can do that," Zoidberg offered.

Fry looked down at Nibbler for some explanation, and the little alien appeared worried almost to the point of panic.

"Too soon," he said to himself. "It's progressing too quickly…"

"It was the Brainspawn?" Fry asked.

"Using its connection to spacetime as a weapon, affirmative," Nibbler said. "The Universe just took a tremendous beating, and several thousand of my people met their end. The enemy now understands the power it wields, and the cosmos will tremble at its might…"

Fry wiped his nose absently, no longer listening, and noticed the dark stain of stigma forming on his wrist. He hurriedly lowered his hand before Leela noticed.

"Come on," he said. "Let's keep moving."

Leela picked up Nibbler and led the way onward through the tunnel systems, which eventually opened out onto a ramshackle subterranean village beneath the city's surface. Accumulated deitrus had been drawn together and piled into haphazard structures, arranged around the fetid drainage canals and central mutagenic lake. Thin shafts of sunlight filtered down from grilles and ducts in the plate above, penetrating the gloomy murk below.

They'd reached the settlement of the sewer mutants.

At first, the eyes and sensor stalks of the various mutated humanoids observed the outsiders from a distance, lurking in shadow. Then a lone voice called out:

"_It's Leela_!"

From the darkness, scores of mutant children with extra limbs and misshapen bodies rushed out to cluster around Leela, making delighted whooping, hissing, and squawking sounds.

"Leela! Leela! Tell us stories of the Surface!"

"Are you here to free us from the sewers?"

"What does the sun look like?"

"Miss Leela, Is it true that you can grant wishes?"

Leela appeared taken aback, and tried to move past the youngsters, but they continued to mob her, so she awkwardly attempted to answer their questions and smiled uncertainly at their enthusiasm.

Fry and the others skirted the little gathering and watched in bemusement from one side as Leela was forced to sit, holding two of the smaller children in her arms. The almost maternalistic scene evoked some odd yearning in Fry that he couldn't quite place, and he found himself thinking back to the time between unrecallable times when he had been briefly married to her…

"Fascinating," Nibbler remarked from the ground.

From somewhere behind them appeared a mutant with two noses and a forehead like a cliff face.

"Your friend Leela has become something of a legend to many in our community," Dwayne said, startling Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg, who had been watching Leela and her fans.

"Yeah, they do seem to love her," Fry said.

"She is the only mutant to have ever escaped the sewers and made a life for herself on the Surface," Dwayne explained. "They see her as beacon of hope and salvation – not unlike the Christ of our ancient myths. Through her, many hope we will one day ascend to the upper world and claim our place among the Surface-dwellers…"

"Fat chance buddy," Bender muttered, striking a match on Dwayne's massive forehead and lighting a cigar. "Folk as ugly as you belong where folk as beautiful as me don't have to see 'em."

Dwayne glared. "Beauty is a matter of perspective," he retorted indignantly. "Perhaps to us it is _you_ who appear ugly."

"Nope," Bender replied. "I don't have two noses, weirdo."

"He's right Dwayne," Vyolet snorted, the reptilian female appearing alongside Dwayne with a cigarette jutting from the corner of her mouth. "Accept it, we're hideous." She blew a cloud of smoke from her gills, and Dwayne looked crestfallen.

Turanga Morris and Munda made their way forward, and Leela gently excised herself from the press of mutant children to run to them. Arms and tentacles encircled her warmly as she embraced her parents.

"Mom, Dad," she said. "It's so good to see you."

"Why of course it's good to see you too, sweetheart," Munda said, cupping Leela's face between her tentacles.

"Yeah, but why the sudden unexpected visit?" Morris added. "Is something wrong?"

"You like you've been hit by a garbage skip," Munda said. "Still beautiful of course, but… are you bleeding?"

Leela glanced down at her grimy, beaten appearance. There were numerous abrasions she'd sustained in the past twenty-four hours that she hadn't even noticed yet. She looked across to Fry where he stood with the others, and he gave her a helpless shrug.

"It's… a long story," she told her parents.

"It always is," Munda replied with patient understanding. "Why don't you and your friends come on home and get yourselves cleaned up."

As the group made their way along the rickety gangways of Mutant Town, Zoidberg was stopped by the Supreme Mutant, a man with an extra arm growing out the side of his head.

"My Lord," Raoul said in horror as he stared at the Doctor. "You poor unfortunate being…"

Zoidberg made a confused gurgle in the back of his throat and blinked at the mutant.

"You are the most horribly mutated person I've ever seen," Raoul went on. "Even more disgusting than him." He pointed at a mutant that appeared to be comprised of a single leg with a face on it.

"Aww…" Zoidberg scuttled dejectedly away after the others.

* * *

The Professor and his employees were sequestered on the hangar floor while Mom's security personnel scoured Planet Express headquarters. They sat in a circle, covered by a squad of armed men. The corporate Matriarch herself stood nearby with Larry and waited. At length, one of the task leaders hurried up to her. 

"We've completed a full search of the compound," he reported. "No sign of the Mighty One or the Nibblonian – they aren't here."

"Right…" Mom glared at Professor Farnsworth. "Where are they?" she demanded.

Farnsworth got to his feet and adjusted his glasses. "More to the point," he said distractedly, "where am _I_?"

"_Chiu cheng_!" Amy muttered in frustration.

Mom prodded Farnsworth in the chest with a bony finger. "Listen stud, if you think your sex appeal will get you out of this, you're sorely mistaken," she said. "I want Fry and that little three-eyed creature – tell me where they are before I get really mad!"

"I should have known you were behind this!" Farnsworth snapped, passing back into lucidity. "You conniving seductive harpy! What kind of evil scheme are you trying to enact?"

"Mind your own cod-sniffing business!" Mom said, turning her back on Farnsworth.

Larry snapped shut his handheld communicator and leaned close to Mom. "We're still unable to contact the _Brezhnev_," he said quietly. "I think the Nibblonian may have been telling the truth."

Mom nodded tiredly. "These fools don't know anything," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Farnsworth and his deadbeat friends. "But still – Hubert's expertise could come in handy if we're really facing a threat. We need to be able to contain this as quickly as possible."

"What about the quantum interface weapon?" Larry asked. "Or the stupidification ray?"

"Idiot!" She slapped him. "You think we can still make money from this!? My building is half demolished, my two favourite sons are dead, and we may well have unleashed a force of death and destruction upon the damned Galaxy – the best we can hope for is that we come out of this without being blamed!"

Larry rubbed his cheek, looking forlorn. "So what now?" he said.

"Gather up Farnsworth and his morons," Mom said. "We can't find Fry and his racoon so we'll just have to confront the damn brain thing ourselves. Make sure Hubert has full access to our data files."

"_Full_ access?" Larry repeated incredulously. "But… not even I have that level of…"

"Shut up!" Mom snarled.

As the security personnel prodded the Professor and the others toward the doors, Hermes Conrad held out a sheaf of papers toward Mom.

"This is da standard kidnapping and ransom statement to be lodged with the central bureaucracy in the event you intend to hold us unlawfully for any given period of time," he said. "The forms must be submitted with at least three weeks' notice, and…"

Mom pulled out her PPK and put three bullets through the papers, causing Hermes to drop them in fright.

"…Sweet Jaguar of Dagobah," he said weakly. "…Discharging of a firearm on company property… I have to submit an incident report…"

"Scruffy's gotta find Scruffy a new job," Scruffy muttered to himself as a security grunt pushed him out through the hangar door. "Somethin' less excitin', where folk remembers yer name…"

"Move it!" Larry snapped.

Farnsworth, Hermes, Amy, and Scruffy, were all led into a waiting shuttlecraft that was boarded by Mom and her henchmen. It lifted off and blasted away into the morning sky.


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: A Sewer Too Far

The air beneath the city's supporting plate was stagnant, hanging in heavy unmoving strata, so the distinct chemical trail of a fossil fuel-powered internal combustion vehicle was simple enough to track. Robot 1-X Ultima found the abandoned Ford Mustang well before the other security drones got to it, and observed it for a moment, parked in front of a ruined house.

There was nobody around. The only infrared signatures were too small to be humanoid. Arbitrarily, Ultima selected a cluster bomb from its weapons carousel and launched it. The house and car were instantly engulfed in a blanket of fire, disintegrating into spinning flaming fragments.

_Leave the enemy no ground to go to…_

Ultima's particle filters detected pheromone traces, and after a few quick scans a trail of footprints could be seen. One set wore boots (the primary target's size), another was barefoot, the third were circular robot feet, and the fourth were sandals of some kind.

Ultima set off in the direction they had gone.

* * *

Even amid the dank putrid squalor of the sewer slums, the Turanga cottage managed to maintain a sense of homely comfort and security. Even the omnipresent stench seemed lessened within its haphazard walls.

Leela explained the situation to her parents as best she could, keeping to the important facts while skirting around concepts that she herself had little understanding of. For their part, Morris and Munda did their best to keep up, despite the gaps in comprehension that resulted from a life lived in the dark underground caverns. They sat on their mouldy sofa while Leela recounted the tale.

The basic points got through: Universe in peril from an evil alien threat, and Fry the only one who could defeat it, with an evil corporation hot in his trail to divine some esoteric secrets.

"What a fascinating story…" Munda said with uncertainty, glancing at Nibbler who sat on the floor licking himself.

"You do believe me, right?" Leela asked.

"Of course we do, dear," Munda replied. "Why, after some of the other adventures you've had, this one seems almost mundane."

Morris laughed heartily. "I'll go see if your boyfriend needs anything else," he said, climbing to his feet.

"Dad!" Leela protested, reddening slightly. "You know he isn't my boyfriend…"

"Oh sure honey," Munda chuckled. "That's what you tell us."

Leela pulled a helpless face and slumped down beside her mother, who coiled a protective tentacle around her shoulders.

In the adjoining room Fry finished lacing up a pair of worn out old sneakers. Walking through the sewers barefoot had left a disconcerting assortment of cuts on the soles of his feet – and even Fry was dubious about open wounds being immersed in sewer sludge.

"They fit okay?" Morris asked upon entering the room.

"They're great," Fry said. "Thanks for letting me borrow them."

"Oh, don't mention it," Morris said, and Fry tried not to stare at his vertically-oriented mouth. Morris might have been smiling, but it was difficult to tell. "Can't have the saviour of the Universe tromping around with no shoes," he added, casting a glance at Bender and Zoidberg who appeared to be arm-wrestling in one corner.

Fry grunted uncomfortably. "So, Leela told you guys everything?" he asked.

"There abouts, what parts of it we could understand." Morris turned serious. "Take a walk with me, Philip," he said.

Compliantly, Fry followed Morris out of the house and up one of the boardwalks. Wanting to impress Leela's father, he made an effort not to slouch and politely refrained from screwing his nose up at the pervasive stink. After a few moments silence, Morris produced a large hip flask and passed it to Fry, who nearly choked after taking a swig.

"Distilled right here in Mutant Town," Morris said with a chuckle, taking back the flask. "Over ninety percent alcohol by volume, and the extra ten percent you probably don't want to know about."

"It's… very lively," Fry rasped, trying to swallow the fire that seemed to be burning a line down his throat.

"This situation you're in," Morris said abruptly, "I want to know what kind of danger you're leading my Leela into."

Fry was silent for a moment as the two of them walked side-by-side, carefully measuring his response. "I don't know what I'm walking into," he admitted finally. "But I do know that I didn't start this thing, and I'm not leading Leela anywhere – she's with me because she chose to be. I would give anything for her to be safe at home, but you try telling her that…"

Morris nodded. "I see," he said evenly.

"I'm not sure you do, sir," Fry said. "Leela and I are friends, and we've stood by each other through a lot of ups and downs – we've been to the very brink of doom and back again, and we've always done it together, because together we're stronger than we are alone."

Morris suddenly clapped a hand on Fry's back, almost making him stumble into the mutagenic canal.

"I admire your honesty, Philip," he said, pausing to look up at a grille set in the cavern ceiling hundreds of feet above. "I won't pretend I like the idea of my Leela getting involved in some cosmic war, but I suppose you're right – she's been living her own life up to now and she knows how to look after herself. I just want you to promise me…"

"You don't even have to say it," Fry said. "I'd die before I ever let anything hurt Leela." He paused for a moment, and added: "Of course, she's the one who usually ends up saving me, but my sentiment remains valid!"

"Heh heh," Morris chuckled. "You really have it bad for her, don't you lad?"

"Huhh… what?" Fry made a show of looking confused. "I… I don't know what you mean."

"Hey, it's fine," Morris said. "She could do a lot worse… like _him_ for example." He pointed at the leg-mutant standing across the canal, who sighed and hopped away.

"Ahh," Fry shrugged and looked uncomfortably at the ground. "She's not interested in me," he said with a dejected edge to his voice. "I couldn't even finish her opera. She deserves someone who can provide for her; someone successful who knows how to use chopsticks and doesn't wipe his mouth on expensive tapestries at stupid rich parties…"

"Maybe just someone who _loves her_ would suffice?" Morris offered.

Fry stared at Morris, and the mutant shrugged.

"She finds it difficult to trust," he went on, "in people or in feelings, and I suppose that's partly our fault. The way she grew up, never having anyone to depend upon but herself… and then you came along, defrosted into her life and suddenly she had friends, people who loved her, a family. She's afraid to change anything because she thinks she might lose it all. But she needs you more than she lets on, and cares about you more than she'll admit… In truth, you're really all that her mother and I ever hear about. Just be patient with her."

"Why are you telling me this?" Fry asked stupidly.

"Munda and I are quite fond of you, Philip," Morris explained. "You reunited us with our daughter… prevented her from killing us, and as you said – you've been a dear friend to her. What I mean to say is… you have our blessing."

Fry blinked in surprise. "I, uh…Thank you sir," he managed at last, slightly stunned.

"Hey, if you do manage to break through that shell of hers you'll… uh… play safe… won't you?"

Fry stared blankly for a moment, and then his eyes widened.

"Oh God, of course!"

"Right, because…"

"That's… I would always…"

"…Just wanted to make sure…"

"You don't even need to…"

"I mean, not that it's any of my business…"

They stared at each other in very awkward silence for a few long moments, and both were relieved when Raoul and Vyolet came running up to interrupt them.

"A strange flying robot has been spotted in the Eastern tunnels," the three-armed mutant leader said breathlessly. "Our perimeter foragers report that it looks like some kind of armed attacker – probably chasing Leela and her friends." He cast a meaningful look at Fry, but Fry wasn't ready to launch into any long-winded explanation; instead he returned Raoul's stare evenly.

"It's after us," he confirmed. "Don't ask me why, just understand that we have to leave. Trust me."

Raoul glanced at Morris, who nodded almost imperceptibly, and then back to Fry.

"Alright," he said at last. "We will buy you time, as best we can. Go now."

"Thanks," Fry said. He and Morris turned and sprinted back toward the Turanga house.

Leela and her mother looked up in surprise when Fry and Morris burst in puffing and panting.

"Robot… found us… coming… escape!" Fry gasped, trying to catch his breath.

"It tracked us all the way down here!?" Leela exclaimed in disbelief, surging to her feet.

"Ohhh, we're boned!" Bender said, hopping around in fright. "That beautiful wonderful 1-X robot will kill us all!"

"We'll lead you out," Morris said. "The rest of the mutants down here will do what they can, now hurry!"

Together, they all rushed out of the house and off down the length of Mutant Town's main 'boulevard', past Martin Luther Thing Junior High (repaired since the last time Fry and Leela had seen it) and Stenchy's Café.

Fry noticed many adult mutants marshalling with primitive weapons in hastily-assembled militia units on the banks of the lake and secreted on rooftops.

"Wait, they're gonna _fight_ it?" he said in amazement.

"Our people aren't exactly pushovers," Munda replied.

"That's right," Morris said proudly. "Final Solution robots from the government's Genetic Purity Bureau tried to exterminate us back in 2980, but we gave them what for! Man, those were the days…"

"But this is different," Leela said desperately. "The thing that's after us is a full military droid – they can't beat it with their sticks and stones! People will die!"

"Hey! Don't write these brave subterranean warriors off so easily, Leela," Bender chided, and then in a low whisper added: "If they wanna kill themselves for us, I say we let 'em…"

"No!" Leela stopped, and Nibbler walked into the back of her left boot with a grunt and a muttered curse.

"If they're going to fight," Leela said, "then I'll fight with them."

"And if Leela fights, then so will I!" Fry added. "Of course… I won't fight as well as she does, but it's the thought that counts…"

"I'll be cheering for you both from several miles away," Bender said enthusiastically.

"Leela," Munda said, laying a tentacle on her daughter's hand. "Haven't you and your friends got a more important task right now?"

"Yes!" Nibbler snapped impatiently from the ground.

Leela looked uncertain. "But…"

"Sweetheart…" Morris pointed, and Leela looked: across the lake, in the worship cavern where once had stood an unexploded nuclear bomb, there was now a different religious icon standing on the great stone altar.

It was a twelve-foot-tall statue of a one-eyed woman, with flowing hair and a determined stance.

"You've given these people a gift," Morris went on as Leela gaped in horrified astonishment at her own likeness. "The greatest gift that a subjugated people can ever receive – hope, an inspiration, a reason to keep going; to fight, to die… and to live."

"But this is wrong," Leela whispered in shock.

"I'll say," Bender added, casting a critical eye at the statue. "They left off all your cellulite." Fry kicked him in the ass.

Leela looked at her parents, aghast. "How could you let them do this?" she asked. "I'm not some messiah… I'm just me…" She pointed at Fry. "He saved the whole Universe, and nobody built a statue of him!"

"We did, however, release a line of action figures," Nibbler said quietly, and Fry looked at him in surprise.

"Maybe it's not so much about you, sweetie," Munda told her daughter. "Maybe it's about them, about what they need. Don't take it away from them."

Leela gazed around, and noticed many of the mutant militia were looking back at her, with hope and adoration shining accusingly in their eyes. She inclined her head helplessly and groaned.

"We need to leave Earth," Nibbler said. "Where is your ship?"

"Not sure," Leela muttered. "After the EMP it would have crash-landed somewhere near the City centre."

"Then that's our destination," Morris said. "Come on."

Raoul, Vyolet, and Dwayne watched from a nearby rooftop as the Turangas and their weird friends disappeared into a side tunnel. Leela stopped once to look back at the underground settlement, and the mutants waved at her merrily. Then she too vanished.

"Well, she's safely away now," Vyolet said, with a snort and a cloud of smoke. "And the young ones have been taken to the north cavern. When's this badass robot gonna show up?"

"You speak too soon, my dear," Raoul said. "Behold!" The third arm on the side of his head lifted a notched and rust-pitted old talwar sword and pointed it at the other end of the cavern. There, a battered military droid had flown in through a side tunnel and now hovered, scanning back and fourth.

"Doesn't seem so dangerous," Vyolet said, taking up a serrated spear. "The thing looks like it's been through the fires of Hades – check out that battle damage."

"And yet it survives," Dwayne noted quietly. "Let's not underestimate it."

"Agreed," said Raoul.

Vyolet lifted a bugle fashioned from copper pipes and blew a single forlorn note that echoed across the cavern.

The Battle of Mutant Town had begun.

The few firearms possessed by the mutant militia were mostly ancient projectile weapons liberated from the ruins of Old New York, with a few low-grade lasers augmenting the meagre arsenal. All of them were employed simultaneously from rooftop sniping roosts, and Robot 1-X Ultima found itself suddenly buffeted by a hail of bullets and weak laser blasts.

Ultima wheeled in the air, identifying multiple hostile targets amid the litter of sewer debris. As it prepared to fire on the guerrilla positions, a secondary detachment of attackers appeared on the cavern floor below and hurled (actually _hurled_, with their arms!) long spike-tipped objects at Ultima.

The spears clattered harmlessly off the robot's flanks, and Ultima targeted a group of mutant fighters on the edge of a glowing green canal, blasting them under a railgun deluge. The survivors scurried back to the relative safety of the shanties.

Ultima fired its last salvo of loitering missiles that soared up into the air and they began circling above like birds of prey – waiting for a target to present itself. But the mutants were like ghosts – generations of hiding in the shadows had bred into them an ability to move unseen, coming and going like the wind and vanishing into dark forgotten places as quickly as they had appeared. Adding to the difficulty was the all-pervasive humidity and background radiation of the sewers that was degrading infrared returns.

In frustration, Ultima fired a pair of atom lasers that reduced a row of houses to smouldering ashes.

Movement from on high: Some mutant militia had scaled the ceiling of the cavern and were now toppling boulders from rickety catwalks above.

Ultima darted left and right, dodging most of the falling rocks until one slammed into its head and bore it downwards toward the mutagenic lake. With a tremendous splash, the robot disappeared into the green murk.

As ripples crossed the lake of toxic slime, mutants emerged slowly from their hidden positions and began to cheer. Raoul, Vyolet, and Dwayne looked on from their rooftop.

"Too easy… that wasn't enough to kill it," Dwayne said in a worried voice. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Stay concealed! It's a ruse! The thing is playing possum so it can…"

Ultima suddenly exploded upward out of the lake with guns firing, raking into the now-exposed ranks of mutant militia fighters with its lasers. The loitering missiles began to stab down, blowing mutant bodies apart even as they fled for cover.

As Raoul watched his people being butchered, he gave a roar of fury and grabbed hold of a rope tied loosely nearby. With swords held in his two other hands, he swung out into the middle of the cavern, high above the lake, and flew headlong at the hovering robot. Hefting their own weapons, Dwayne and Vyolet took up the other two ropes and followed.

Ultima found itself suddenly assaulted by three mutated figures swinging past and around it, and landing ineffectual blows against its flanks with blunt handheld weapons. Every time the robot turned to track one, another would strike at it; like annoying mosquitoes, the three enemies kept darting just out of reach.

The damaged war drone retreated slightly to a standoff position where it might more easily pick off the swinging attackers.

Raoul shouted: "_Now_!"

As one, the three mutant friends let go of their ropes and fell together toward the lake. At the same moment, Ultima opened up with its twin gatling guns and Raoul cried out as an armour-piercing round burst through his abdomen in a messy explosion of gore. He and the others splashed down into the green lake and disappeared from view.

From either side of the cavern, two huge old boilers were cut loose from their moorings and swung outward from the walls on roof cables. With ponderous inertia, the great rusty iron blocks closed the distance between each other. Ultima noticed the trap too late, and the two heavy boilers slammed together with the robot between them.

The force of the impact was great enough to crack Ultima's external casing and completely crush several servomotors. Sensor lenses were broken, another micropile ruptured, and a number of weapons systems were now inoperative. Coolant began leaking from the machine and it flew off wildly away from the dented boobytrap, unable to adjust its suddenly misaligned gyroscopes in time. It slammed down near the wide cistern entrance to the deep subterranean sub-sewer, rolled in the mud, and accidentally fired off a barrage of high-explosive flack shells when a short-circuit tripped the firing mechanism. A large section of roof collapsed down on Ultima, exposing the glare of daylight from the upper city.

At the edge of the mutagenic lake, Dwayne and Vyolet pulled Raoul out of the murky slime between them. A dark red stain marred the surface of the green sludge.

"D…did we g…get it?" Raoul stammered, clutching the bullet wound in his stomach.

"Yeah sweetie, we got it," Vyolet said, biting her green scaled lip. She exchanged a glance with Dwayne, who lowered his eyes. The large-calibre anti-aircraft round had done considerable damage, and the colour of the blood indicated liver-shot. They both knew what that meant.

"That's… good," Raoul said weakly, as a slight spasm ran through his body. "I… think I'll be okay… it doesn't really hurt as much as…" He went limp, and the other two stared down at their dead leader in anguish.

"No!" Vyolet sobbed. With a shaking hand, she gently closed Raoul's eyelids. There was no jubilation now, as the mutants began to gather around.

Suddenly, the sound of shifting masonry echoed across the cavern. The pile of rubble that had buried Ultima was now moving.

"You must be joking?!" Vyolet exclaimed, wiping tears from her scaled cheeks.

"It can't still be alive…" Dwayne muttered. "Nothing's that strong."

He was wrong. Boosted by a now-unsteady sputtering ion thruster, Ultima burst up from out of the debris and wobbled drunkenly, smoke wafting from rends in its armour.

Beside Dwayne, the leg mutant mumbled something determined and heroic, but his words were garbled by the cutlass he held in his teeth.

Suddenly, a deep rumble filled the cavern, which had nothing to do with Ultima, and the earth shook beneath the mutants' feet.

A terrible creature from the dark depths of the earth had been roused by the concussive explosions. Whether spawned by nature or by the corrupting toxic overflow of civilization was unknown. What was known was that it had a heart of sinister purpose, cloaked in shadow, and terror went before it. It was a demon of the ancient world.

It was… _El Chupanibre_.

Slowly, the creature rose up behind Ultima, clambering out of the sub-sewer and looming above, sinuous green flanks and hooked claws dripping with fetid water and luminescent algae.

El Chupanibre let out a tremendous, earth-shaking roar, and Ultima turned to behold the new threat.

"_Fall back_!" Dwayne shouted. He and Vyolet carried Raoul's body as the surviving mutants fled the impending clash of titans.

The beast from below flexed its huge talons and advanced.

Ultima deployed its close-combat blades and moved in gleefully…


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Starship Bloopers

The dull crump of distant ordinance discharges faded gradually (mercifully) as Leela's parents led the little group onwards through the confusing maze of pipes and tunnels. Leela looked back occasionally, uncertain and worried, and Fry tried to reassure her.

"They know what they're doing," he said.

Leela didn't reply.

Occasionally, Morris would stop to ascend a ladder up to a manhole cover, checking on their position and looking for the Planet Express ship. After the fifth or sixth time, he returned down with a vertical grin on his face.

"It's up there," he said. "Sticking out the side of a Burger Queen, but it seems intact."

"Did you say 'burger'?" Zoidberg salivated and ascended the ladder three rungs at a time.

"Well, thanks muties," Bender said. "I don't care what anyone says – you guys are Homo Superior." With that, he set off climbing after Zoidberg.

"Yeah, thankyou for everything," Fry said.

"Don't you mention it, Philip," Munda said, kissing him on the cheek.

"Remember what we talked about," Morris added, shaking Fry's hand.

"I will sir." Fry climbed up the ladder, leaving Leela alone with her parents. There was a long silence as Leela stared at them, her face a conflicted mass of warring emotions and unasked questions.

"The other mutants," she said quietly, "they believe I'm going to somehow liberate them from the sewers. Is that what you believe too?"

Morris and Munda glanced at each other uncertainly.

"Leela, you don't have to do anything for us," Morris said.

"That's right," Munda added. "We're already so proud of you…"

"But you hope, don't you?" Leela pressed. Her parents said nothing. "You deserve so much better than this, all of you… all of _us_," she sighed. "If there was something I could do to bring about change," she said, "then I would… but what? I'm just one person… I don't know how…"

"You just do whatever your heart tells you, Leela," Munda said.

Leela watched her parents for a long moment and finally came to a decision.

"All right," she said, nodding in affirmation. "When I return, I'll find a way – things will change, I'll see to it… somehow."

She hugged and kissed her parents, and they watched her disappear up through the manhole. Together, Morris and Munda shrank back into the shadows and vanished.

Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg were peering cautiously around a street corner when Leela rejoined them.

"What's the hold-up?" she asked, following their gazes to where the Planet Express ship sat at an odd angle, lodged into the side of a fast-food restaurant. Hamburger patties and Freedom Fries had spilled out everywhere.

"Fuzz," Bender explained, pointing at the police holograms that marked off the area, and the patrol hovercar parked indiscreetly up the street.

"Looks like they're waiting for us," Leela said in frustration. "Dammit – we won't make it; we'd need time for Bender to get the ship running again."

"Hmm…" Zoidberg dragged his eyes away from the foodstuff spilled on the road and glanced back and fourth between his friends. His mind ticked over.

"So we're boned again?" Bender groused.

"Maybe… we could hijack another ship from somewhere," Leela said doubtfully.

"No need, no need!" Zoidberg said with regal self-importance, stepping in front of the others with his claws on his hips. "The robut is needed to fix the ship, the cyclops female to fly it, and friend Fry must save the Universe for some reason – that leaves only me, brave Doctor Zoidberg to distract the police long enough for my dear friends to make good their escape!"

"But you'll be captured!" Fry argued.

"No, wait," Leela said. "They don't want him – nobody does. They'd just let him go once they figure out we're gone."

"Good plan," Nibbler said distantly from Fry's shoulder.

"Zoidberg, are you sure about this?" Fry asked, taking the Decapodian by the shoulders.

"Come now, Fry – you would do the same for me," Zoidberg said.

Fry stared blankly at him for a prolonged moment. "Yes," he said woodenly, straight-faced. "Yes I would."

"Thank you, Zoidberg," Leela said, giving the lobster an impatient push. "You're a true friend. Goodbye."

"Don't drop the soap!" Bender added.

Zoidberg edged around the corner and glanced up the street to where the patrol car still sat in wait. "Alright," he muttered. "Zoidberg away!"

Smitty and URL watched through the window of their car as a red lobster waddled slowly across the street toward the crashed green spaceship. The alien paused to eat some of the uncooked hamburger patties off the road before continuing on.

"Looks like something's finally happening," URL droned languidly. "Aww yeah."

"That's one of the fugitives Momcorp tagged," Smitty said, consulting his info screen. "Guess we'd better beat him until he tells us where his friends are."

"Time for some old-school abuse of power." URL switched on the sirens and drove the hovercar forward.

At the wail of klaxons, Zoidberg broke into a hasty scuttle, whooping in fright as he went racing away from the PE ship and down a side alley. Patrol car 718 followed and disappeared from sight.

"That brave lobster," Leela said. "Come on – now's our chance!" Together, she and the others dashed across the street.

With the ship's electrical systems down, it took Bender's strength to operate the manual release on the emergency access door. Then they were all inside, the ship dark and quiet, and the deck slanted at an awkward angle.

"Bender," Leela said. "Can you pull the same trick you did with the Mustang and get us operational?"

Bender managed to shrug, despite the lack of mobile shoulders. "I guess," he said. "Of course, this bird's a lot more complicated than that gas-guzzling contraption."

"All I need are engines and manual control. We can repair the other systems once we're away."

Bender narrowed his eye shutters. "Of course, we're gonna have to talk about money," he said.

"How about I take off your head and stick it somewhere your arms can't reach?" Leela replied automatically.

"Alright, alright," the robot growled, stomping away toward the engine room and muttering homicidally to himself.

Leela and Fry made their way to the bridge, where Leela set about replacing burnt-out fuses in the control console. Nibbler hopped up onto the navigator's station, and without anything else to do, began licking himself noisily.

"It's even worse than we feared," Fry said from one side. "The coffee machine isn't working."

"We'll just have to rough-it," Leela replied, sitting down in the command chair to wait for Bender to degauss the engine components. "Just out of curiosity, Fry, what did you talk about with my father?"

"Uh…" Fry began to blush a deep pink. "Um… y'know… just guy stuff."

Leela stared at him fixedly.

"_Geopolitics_," Fry conjured at last. "We discussed geopolitics, as he and I both often do."

Leela sighed. "You don't even know what that is, Fry."

"Sure I do," Fry said confidently. "It's like when mountains and gorges argue with one another."

Nibbler let out an expressive groan.

"You don't have to lie to me, Fry," Leela said, turning her attention back to the console. "I know my parents have some strange ideas about you and I, but they're just old romantics eager to see me settle down. Don't take any notice of that stuff."

"Oh…" Fry looked at his feet dejectedly. "…Okay."

"I just can't manage to convince them that we're only friends."

"Huh. That must be annoying," Fry muttered gloomily as he walked away.

"It's silly, don't you think?" Leela glanced up from the console and looked around for Fry, but he'd left the bridge. "What's his problem?" she wondered aloud.

Nibbler groaned again, louder, and buried his face in his paws. Leela was about to comment when the ship shuddered suddenly and the lights flickered on and off. The low drone of power returned, and running displays on the control console gleamed.

"Okay, we're alive again," Leela said, and then into the shipwide intercom: "Everyone strap yourselves in."

As the impulse thrusters came online, Leela backed the PE ship out of the ruined Burger Queen, dislodging rubble from the nose section. The little green freight ship hovered for a moment before Leela tilted it to a diagonal inclination, with its main engine nozzles pointing at the ground.

With a tremendous blast of exotic energy, the Dark Matter engines flared into life, and the Universe shifted position around the stationary ship.

Zoidberg, though being held down on the pavement by Smitty and URL, managed to twist his neck and watch the ship soaring off into the sky.

"Go, my friends!" he warbled happily. "To freedom!"

"Shut up, you slimeball!" Smitty snarled, whacking the lobster over the head with his lightsabre baton.

"Damn," URL droned, watching the ship grow smaller. "Looks like the fugitives pulled a fast one on us stupid cops. Ohh yeah."

Nearby, a manhole cover suddenly flew upward from the ground and clattered down right next to URL.

"What the hell," the robot cop muttered.

From out of the manhole, an unrecognisable shape clambered on twisted limbs. The battered metal object was covered in deep claw marks and viscous green blood. With its ion thrusters no longer operative, Ultima had to drag itself along with its forelimbs.

"Is that a robot?" Smitty said, looking at the blackened mass of twisted metal.

"Maybe it used to be," URL replied.

Zoidberg looked on in silent terror.

Ultima noted the Planet Express ship passing just out of visual range and surveyed the short list of systems that were still operational. Happily, the robot brought its fusion booster online and ignited it.

A small thermonuclear explosion vaporized a section of road in incandescent white fury, sending Zoidberg and the two police officers tumbling head-over-heels through the air. Ultima shot upward in excited anticipation, following the PE ship's vapour trail.

Up, up… the Earth's layers of atmosphere fell away one by one. The ionosphere was a brief crackle of static. Out into the void; satellites whizzed past. There, directly ahead: the Dark Matter drive, now ready to spool up to full power…

Ultima tried firing lasers, and found they were all damaged. The gatling guns were jammed. All its missile reserves were spent. Railguns weren't receiving power. The severely-damaged war drone turned in desperation to its antiphoton cannon, which had been out of alignment since the battle on Mars. Theoretically it might still fire, although the danger of blowback was great.

Ultima took the risk, targeting the Planet Express ship's engines. It fired, or tried to, and the particle accelerator mechanism in the antiphoton cannon bucked violently and promptly exploded. Ultima was thrown into an erratic spin, damaged components flying away from it in a great arc. The robot's systems went offline briefly, and when it came back to consciousness the Planet Express ship was long gone, and it was falling slowly into a Lunar orbit.

Undaunted, Ultima patiently set about devising a series of extensive self-repair protocols. It would wait. The target would return in time; the certainty of that fact burned bright in the robot's fractured mind.

Turanga Leela would return, and the hunt would resume… in time.  
Ultima had all the time in the world.

* * *

Long hours passed after the prisoners were brought aboard Mom's personal interstellar frigate (shaped, oddly, like her head) in High Earth Orbit. The Momship had departed the Sol system for destinations unknown, and Professor Farnsworth was taken away to review secret research data, leaving Hermes, Amy, and Scruffy to be shoved by henchmen into a holding cell. 

And so they waited, as the corporate matriarch's ship's engines thrummed endlessly. There were no windows, no way to tell where they were or how much time had passed; just the dull grey bulkhead stamped with the logo of Mom's Friendly Holding Cell Company.

The monotony was painful. Without a single scrap of reading material besides the labels on the cot blankets, all three of them were bored to death.

Scruffy had had enough.

It was time to take action.

"So," he grunted, leaning close to Amy, "how's about you get _nekkid_ fer us?"

The elbow to his solar plexus had him wheezing on the floor for a full minute, after which he went and sat beside Hermes instead.

"Folk was less uptight about their bodies back in the twenty-nine seventies," he muttered grumpily. "Scruffy remembers those days – peace and free love…"

A few decks up, Professor Farnsworth continued to read through volumes of detailed scientific reports, emitting occasional grunts of "Oh my…" and "…Fascinating." He was learning everything that Ogden Wernstrom's team had discovered from the Brainspawn.

His attention was drawn inexorably to the section that described the role and nature of the 'Mighty One'.

"Sweet merciful Zombie Jesus on a dollar bill!" he said in alarm. "That idiot Fry is our only hope!?"

Meanwhile, on the bridge, Mom paced the deck while Larry and the Helmsman looked on nervously.

"How much further?" she snapped, glancing through the forward screen.

"Impossible to say, ma'am," the Helmsman replied. "We're following the residual radiation trail from the point of last contact as best we can, but there's no way to tell how far it's gone… Although there is one thing…"

"What?!" Mom rounded on the man, and he shrank back.

"…It's definitely headed back towards Earth," he said.

Mom looked out through the screen again, searching for the elusive research vessel. "We can't let it get there," she murmured.

The door to the bridge whisked open and Professor Farnsworth shuffled in, glaring at everyone through his two inch thick glasses.

"This is an outrage!" he bellowed. "You all should be ashamed of yourselves!"

Mom put her hands on her hips and turned to meet his glare. "I don't care if you disapprove of what we've done, you old fool," she retorted. "Risks must be taken in the march of progress, everyone knows that."

"Progress?" Farnsworth repeated incredulously. "That's how you justify giving me a cabin without a bathroom? It's disgraceful! I had to relieve myself in an ashtray, dammit! It overflowed! I demand a stateroom with _full_ amenities!"

Mom groaned in irritation. "Have you reviewed the research data yet?" she asked, forcing some patience into her voice.

"…The whuhh?" Farnsworth looked blank.

Mom massaged her temples and ground her teeth. "The _Brainspawn_!" she hissed.

"Don't change the subject!" Farnsworth snapped. "We're talking about the Brainspawn here, not your favourite shoe store – get with the program, dammit!" He shuffled past her and sat down in the ship's command chair with an audible creak of ancient bones grinding against replacement joints.

"And have you had any ideas?" Mom seethed.

"Whuhh? Oh yes – _Good News Everyone_!" the Professor said. "I have devised a mechanism that can shield a person's Delta brainwave, the wave that the creature feeds off, so that they can approach without the Brainspawn being aware." He produced a dog-eared napkin covered in blotchy scrawlings and fed it into a nearby computer console; a scratchy hand-drawn electronics diagram appeared on the computer screen.

"It looks like a helmet," Larry observed, looking at the diagram with its circuits and valves.

"A helmet? Oh my, yes," Farnsworth said. "It won't protect from the stupidification field if the Brainspawn becomes aware of the wearer through some other means and strengthens said field, but it should allow someone to get close, remaining relatively invisible to the creature."

"Excellent," Mom said. "Have the ship's matter synthesizer whip a few of them up."

"Do it yourself!" Farnsworth snapped angrily.

"Uhh… ma'am?" the Helmsman said suddenly.

"What?" Mom glared at the interruption.

"Begging your pardon," the man said, "but we're picking up the ship on long-range scanners."

Everyone on the bridge stared at the forward screen. Ahead lay a starfield; a splatter pattern of light against black velvet. One distant point of light was tagged with a yellow box graphic as it moved across the stars.

The _SS Brezhnev_ had been found…

* * *

Leela piloted the Planet Express ship onward through deep space for some time before finally realizing she had absolutely no idea what their destination was. As Bender joined her and Nibbler on the bridge she shut down the Dark matter engine, leaving the ship to coast silently, and turned to the little three-eyed alien. 

"Where are we going?" she asked simply. "Where is this monster Brainspawn?"

"We are not going to confront the creature yet," Nibbler said. "We are not yet equipped to face the beast. Our destination now is the exact centre of the Universe."

"Your home planet?" Leela looked up as Fry entered, now wearing a replacement red jacket from his cabin. For some reason, he appeared subdued and downcast.

"Affirmative," Nibbler said. "We must travel hither to Eternium, that we may retrieve the one weapon powerful enough to end the threat of the Brainspawn once and for all."

"Is it a Holy Hand-Grenade?" Bender asked.

"Even more powerful still," Nibbler replied.

"Okay," Leela said, bringing a series of star-charts up on her console. "Whatever the weapon is, it'll take us a long time to reach the centre of the Universe in this ship."

"Not necessarily." Nibbler tapped on the nav-console he was using as a seat and brought up the same charts. "If we make use of sub-space spiderholes at these two locations…" He highlighted coordinates on the touch-screen. "…We should be able to cut the journey down from a decade to about a day."

"_Spiderholes_?" Fry asked in confusion. "Don't you mean _wormholes_?"

"No, these are made by planet-sized interdimensional spiders," Nibbler replied. "There are no interdimensional worms."

Leela punched in the coordinates and re-lit the main drive. The ship lunged ahead on its new course, which took it away from any area of space that was detailed in the map database. They were shooting onward into the depths of uncharted territory.

"'…Here be monsters'," Leela said to herself, engaging the autopilot, and the others stared at her. "It's what mariners used to write," she explained sheepishly, "on maps, when they reached the edge of what was known."

Fry grunted and stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. "That's because people are always afraid of the unknown," he said sulkily. "They prefer everything to be laid out, all simple and predictable. Taking a chance on something new would be too scary, so they just call it a monster and tell it they only like it as a _friend_…" He trailed off. Leela was staring at him with an unreadable expression.

"Yeah, those ancient mariners can bite my shiny metal ass," Bender said, completely missing the subtext.

Fry turned away. "I'll be in my hammock," he said. "Wake me when your stupid Universe needs saving." With that, he walked away, and Leela chewed her lip anxiously, wanting to say something, but unsure of what.

The hiss and clunk of the bridge door opening and shutting seemed to echo with abrupt finality.

"What's Captain Yesterday's problem?" Bender said.

"…I am," Leela replied guiltily.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Nibbler on the Roof

The XC-105 Valkyrie tactical transport took up most of the deck of the Momship's main hangar bay. A blunt delta shape encased in a black monoform exterior coating, it was the latest prototype of advanced stealth shuttle that Momcorp had been contracted to develop for the DOOP.

A small team of security personnel and science analysts boarded the little craft, along with Hubert Farnsworth, Larry, and Mom herself (who had insisted on going along for the mission despite the protests of Farnsworth and her son). The incursion team all wore pressure suits and strange circuit-embedded helmets, and the security personnel carried several ominous crates stamped prominently with the radioactive tri-foil.

"Remember everyone," Farnsworth said as the embarkation ramp hissed shut, "the shielding helmets have never been tested, so don't think too loudly. From now on, nobody think about rock music, the colour red, or Robin Williams."

"Oh no!" Larry said. "Now they're all I _can_ think about!"

The atmosphere in the hangar bay dissipated noisily, and the massive external door began to roll open, revealing the stars beyond.

"Let's see if those overpaid grease-monkeys in my skunk-works department are worth their weight in titanium composite," Mom said, pressing a control on the Valkyrie's system console. "Here goes nothing."

As the stealth shuttle lifted from its docking cradle, it flickered briefly and then became completely invisible. Frequencies of the electromagnetic and visual spectrums flowed smoothly around the craft's EM displacement field, rendering it totally unobservable to sensors or the naked eye.

"What the…? Where did everybody go?" Farnsworth cried suddenly.

"You idiot," Mom snapped. "We're only invisible to people _outside_ the shuttle."

"What? No – I dropped my glasses!"

As Farnsworth fumbled around on the floor, Larry eased the controls forward and took the shuttle out of the hangar bay and into the open void. The Momship was holding distant station about half an AU from the _Brezhnev_, which continued to slowly trawl through space without deviation. Attempts to hail the research vessel had been fruitless, and an unidentifiable background quantum fluctuation had been detected resonating from the area surrounding the great ship.

As the Valkyrie moved gradually closer to the target, all those on board became increasingly anxious. The entire mission hinged on the success of the delta-null shielding helmets devised by the mad and senile Professor Farnsworth, in whom few aboard had much confidence, himself included.

The distance closed. The tension built. And the mighty Brezhnev grew larger on the forward viewscreen.

"There's something strange…" Larry said, peering at the two-kilometre block of steel and wrath. "The external surfaces… they seem mottled by something."

"Up the magnification, you stupid moronic idiot fool!" Mom snapped.

Larry did so, and a section of the research vessel's hull expanded into stark clarity.

"…What the hell is that?" Mom said. The hull plates were crisscrossed at random by wide clinging trunks and tendrils that seemed to form some vast network, growing from within the ship and seeming to envelop it with the grey, almost organic-looking growths.

"I've never seen anything like it," Farnsworth confessed. "Not at this scale anyway, though if I were to guess, I'd say this was the result of nanomachine infestation."

"Trash-talk!" Mom said. "I've seen nanites go haywire – they just turn everything into grey goo, they don't grow vines."

"I didn't say they were _haywire_, you saggy-breasted harridan!" Farnsworth retorted. "You told me it was possible that your precious ship had been subverted by the Brainspawn – well that looks like subversion by nanomachines, probably _controlled_ by the Brainspawn."

Mom growled quietly.

"It also looks like it's sustained significant battle damage," Larry said, switching the view to show numerous deep impact craters that marked the surface of the ship.

"So, the Nibblonians already tried?" Mom wondered aloud.

The Valkyrie flew into the shadow of the Brezhnev, with the research ship looming before them like a great plain of metal. Larry piloted the stealth shuttle toward a docking point that appeared relatively free of nanomachine growths.

"You gave your Helmsman the proper instructions?" Farnsworth asked Mom.

"Yes." Mom nodded. "Cowardly and snivelling though he may be, Gary Helm is the greatest Helmsman who ever Helmed. He'll begin to run interference for us in the Momship as soon as we're docked."

"Hopefully that will distract the Brainspawn enough to aid with our infiltration, oh my yes… distraction… infiltration… atomic monsters… crush enemies… called me mad!?" He continued mumbling incoherently to himself and Mom looked away to watch the yawning mouth of the Brezhnev's docking chamber closed around them.

The stealth shuttle gently connected to the airlock, and the doors were operated manually to avoid any telltale energy draw. Preceded first by armed security who gave the all-clear, the team emerged through the airlock, seeming to appear suddenly out of thin air as they stepped from the Valkyrie's displacement field. They entered the dark corridors of the Brezhnev and activated their suit-mounted lights.

"I'm reading low atmosphere," one member of the tech team said over the short-wave comm. link as she consulted her Tricorder. "The environmental system is down… no life-signs in our immediate vicinity, but some strange anomalous background noise on a number of frequencies."

"Let's get moving – we have a lot of ship to cover," Mom said. Glancing back at where the invisible shuttle was ostensibly docked somewhere at the end of the airlock tube, she added: "Everyone remember where we parked – I don't want to step through the wrong airlock and have my brain sucked out my nose."

Before she turned back to the others, a movement caught her eye, and she turned sharply to see a shadowed figure dart back into hiding.

"Huhh…" she muttered to herself. "No life-signs, eh?"

They moved off through the silent corridors and continued for some time. The security people stopped them occasionally to access wall panels where they loaded subversive software into the remains of the ship's systems that froze surveillance camera feeds along the team's path. They were taking no chances.

At one point, the team rounded a corner and found the way had been blocked by an amorphous mass of the same ligneous grey growths that were strangling the outer hull of the ship.

"I'll get a sample," one of the scientists said, stepping closer to the wall of nanomachines.

"I wouldn't do that," Farnsworth said quickly, grabbing the man by his shoulder. "There's no way of telling what it can do – it might convert our mass into raw elements. Or even worse – rewrite our neurones and brainwash us into buying horrible, soul-destroying _country_ music… like what happened to all those poor fools in the latter half of the twentieth century."

"He's right," Mom said. "Leave it – we're here to destroy, not to learn." They changed their route to avoid the growths and continued onward deeper into the ship. From some distance behind them, a figure observed their progress, steeped in shadow and skulking behind support struts and banks of machinery to remain concealed.

Farnsworth caught sight of the furtive movement and glanced back sharply – the figure ducked out of view.

Quietly, so as not to cause panic among the team, he spoke to Mom.

"There's something back there," he said, tilting his head back along the way they'd come.

Mom nodded with a grunt. "It's Wernstrom," she murmured.

"_Wernstrom_!?" the Professor spat distastefully.

"He's been following us since we came aboard," Mom went on.

"So he escaped the Brainspawn's attack…"

"Escaped… or was set loose."

From some distance behind, Ogden Wernstrom looked out of the darkness, his eyes wide and feverish as he watched the team.

"He was in command of this operation," Mom said, glancing back along the passageway. "Now the object of the operation may be in command of him."

"Perhaps we ought to play it safe and decapitate him?" Farnsworth offered. "And then maybe burn his corpse for good measure."

"I've seen too much death today," Mom replied. "Besides, Wernstrom might have some part to play yet, for good or ill, before this is all over."

Farnsworth looked unconvinced, but said nothing.

Meanwhile, out in space, the Momship flew an erratic course around the _Brezhnev_, occasionally hitting the larger vessel with laser bursts and hard radar spikes, but always keeping to a safe distance. Its pestering manoeuvres were monitored closely by the monumental intelligence that now controlled the Brezhnev, and the research cruiser fired on the Momship repeatedly, but scored no hits.

Onespawn wondered idly what the other vessel was trying to accomplish.

* * *

An inconceivable distance from the edge of any known map, the Planet Express ship traversed a field of planetary debris that had once been a solar system, now turned into a barren cloud of shattered rocks and frozen gases orbiting a dying sun. The epic destruction had been wrought by the opening of a Schwarzschild/Lorentzian spiderhole near the local star's photosphere, resulting in vast swathes of matter being torn from the star, hastening its demise toward the black dwarf state. The surrounding planetary system had been utterly destroyed by the violent tidal forces and brutal accretion disk.

The spiderhole itself was an awe-inspiring spectacle – a vast indigo abyss ringed by chaotic webs of exotic negative matter, with strands stretching many times the diameter of Earth, which held open the throat of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Vast plumes of solar matter swirled into the indescribable depths of the hole, flaring bright as ribbons of energy lashed out.

Leela gasped in wonder at the sight as she flew the ship onward toward the titanic maelstrom. Setting the autopilot, she got up from the command chair and walked closer to the viewscreen the behold the majestic ballet of cosmic destruction.

"Woo hoo, big deal - it's a hole," Bender droned disinterestedly. "I dug a hole behind the Planet Express building and nobody gasped in wonder at it. Except the corpse I stuck in there, but that could have just been gasses escaping…"

"Bender, this is the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen," Leela said, glancing at the robot in irritation.

"No big boots, _this_ is the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen." Bender produced a silver coin, waved it around in front of Leela, and clapped his hands together. The coin was gone. He then reached up to Leela's ear and appeared to snatch the coin out of nowhere.

"Pretty sweet, eh?" he said proudly.

Leela narrowed her eye and walked away to find Fry.

"I thought it was remarkable," Nibbler said, sounding impressed. "How did you do that? Some kind of quantum flux or matter transferance beam?"

"Nah, I'm just magnificent."

Leela moved down the ship's companionway and rapped lightly on the door of Fry's cabin, chiding herself for her own nervousness.

"Fry?" she called. "There's something you'll want to see – it's incredible." There was no reply from the room, and she sighed.

"Look, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings earlier. It was careless. Please forgive me. I want you to come and watch this with me – there are big shiny things… you love big shiny things…"

Still no response. Hesitantly, Leela pressed the door's touchpad, and it rolled open. Fry was fast asleep on his hammock, shirtless and snoring lightly. Leela approached, and then stopped, gaping in horror.

The dark swirling marks of stigma had spread across Fry's chest like an oil slick. As she watched, an offshoot of the affliction wormed outward from the main mass, consuming more normal tissue.

"…Oh Fry…" The taste of fear made Leela swallow hard as she reached out to touch Fry's skin. It was cold.

The contact brought him out of his slumber, and he caught Leela by the wrist. He groaned as his eyes focused on the cycloptic face staring down at him.

"Hey…" he said, and then noted the frightened look in Leela's eye. "What's the matter…? Oh…" Hurriedly, he fell out of the hammock and retrieved his T-shirt to cover the stigma.

"Not very pretty, is it?" he said with forced lightness, pulling the shirt over his head and getting one arm stuck in the neck-hole.

Leela patiently helped him untangle himself. "Does it hurt?" she asked quietly.

"Not exactly," Fry said. "But sometimes it feels like… a heaviness… like I'm being dragged down. Not by weight, but by something else… something _inevitable_. I can't explain it."

There was a sweet tension-coated silence filled with a creamy centre of discomfort as the two friends stared at each other.

"Fry…" Leela grasped for words. "We'll find a way through this."

"I know," Fry replied. "We always do. Um… hey…" He scratched his head awkwardly. "Sorry about before."

"Me too," Leela said. "You're my best friend, Fry… I don't want to hurt you, even though I always seem to manage it one way or another. It's not intentional…"

"I know," Fry said. "Did you need me for something?"

Leela blinked. "Oh yeah," she said, remembering. "The spiderhole – you really have to see this."

When they returned to the bridge, the spiderhole loomed larger through the forawrd viewscreen it pulsed and rippled violently around the constraints of the cosmic webs that held it in place.

"Oh wow," Fry gaped in amazement. "That's even more incredible than Bender's coin trick!"

"Ah, go to hell, you lousy meatbag," Bender muttered bitterly.

"Leela…" Fry said as he gazed out in rapt fascination. "It's the same colour as your hair."

Leela smiled and took her seat at the helm. "So, we just fly right in?" she asked Nibbler.

"Affirmative," Nibbler said. "But be careful – we don't want to be caught in those webs."

"Or do we?" Fry said. "…No, probably not. We'd be lunch for the giant spider, right?"

"Negative," Nibbler said. "Contact with the exotic negative matter would instantly convert our entire mass into pure energy. We would explode."

"…Which is really just as bad," Fry said. He looked back out at the cosmic spectacle that now seemed to take up all of the heavens. The little ship skimmed through a stream of incandescant solar matter that was falling toward the spiderhole, then onward into the yawning indigo abyss.

"Oh," Nibber said belatedly. "This will be bumpy…"

They passed suddenly through the event horizon, and the PE ship became spaghettified, stretched into a narrow green strand of hyperaccellerated matter that was three light-years long, relative to real-space. And then they were in the spiderhole itself, snapping back into shape violently like an elastic band, and whipping around uncontrollably inside the cracking toroid interior of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, at the mercy of unsees and incomprehensible energies.

Fry, Leela, and Bender all screamed as they were thrown around, and sparks erupted from the fuselage. It was like the wildest rollercoaster ride imaginable…

…And then they were spat back out into real space in an explosion of quarks and neutrinos. The ship tumbled end-over end, accellerated wildly by the spiderhole's slingshot effect.

"Oh, thank robot Christ that's over with," Bender said.

"It isn't," Nibbler replied mildly, as the ship fell directly into a second spiderhole that had been positioned sequentially by the Nibblonian people thousands of years ago.

Again the violent spaghettification and breakneck tumble through the throat of the spiderhole. As he clung to the back of Leela's seat for dear life, Fry risked a sidelong glance out one of the windows, and for an instant he thought he saw a translucent shape clinging to the side of the shimmering tunnel of purple light… a collossal many-legged thing with eight eyes the size of continents that watched the PE ship fall past.

Then it was gone, and they were back out into real space, flung away from the Star Spider's interdimensional hole at a dangrous velocity.

Regaining her wits, Leela cancelled the wild roll and slowed the ship.

"Oh, I think I got whiplash!" Bender complained, picking himself up.

"That was cool!" Fry said, climbing out of Leela's lap. "We gotta do that again."

Leela only groaned, knowing they would eventually have to. She turned her eye to the forward screen.

"Well," she said, staring through the screen. "Looks like we're here."

Ahead of them, resplendent in shades of pink and blue, was the planet Eternium, its pastel landmasses seeming to form heart shapes.

The ship's communications screen came to life, showing a Nibblonian female sitting on a cushion.

"Lord Nibbler," Fiona said over the comm. link.

"Greetings," Nibbler said. "I have travelled from Earth, with the Mighty One, seeking the means by which doom can be averted and the balance of the Universe be restored."

"I know to which object you refer," Fiona said gravely. "Our forebears decided eons ago that it should never be used. You have come on a fool's errend."

"Fool I may be," Nibbler growled angrily, "but I am a fool who does not wish to see all of creation vanquished in one stroke of evil because those who could prevent it quailed in the face of their responsibility!"

Fiona stared levelly through the comm. screen. "Harsh words you speak, Lord Nibbler," she said. "But the council is decided on this matter. An alternate plan to combat Onespawn is presently being enacted. We do not need the Mighty One, or the weapon."

Nibbler narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "We shall see," he said. The communication link terminated.

"What was all that about?" Fry said, clearly confused.

"A difference of opinion," Nibbler said simply. He looked troubled as he directed Leela to the landing coordinates. The Planet Express ship fell through the pink atmosphere with a trio of Nibblonian Cuddle-Bug saucers falling in behind to escort the larger vessel.

They had reached the exact centre of the Universe. And it seemed they weren't entirely welcome.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: The Good, The Bad, & The Exploding

The incursion team found themselves blocked by a wall that shouldn't have been there. Where Mom's dech schematic showed a straight corridor, there was now an abrupt dead-end festooned with the ever-present grey pseudopod growths of nanotech.

"It's changed the decks around," Mom said, eying the erroneous wall in irritation.

"Whatever for?" Farnsworth wondered.

"Beats me. Maybe it wanted to make a rumpus room."

"It's because Onespawn… is growing larger," a weak grating voice said from out of the shadows behind the group. The security personnel swung their positron rifles toward the source of the voice and illuminated a skeletal, cowering Ogden Wernstrom with their barrel-mounted lights.

The scheming professor blinked in the glare, his pupils like pinpricks. He was wearing no breathing aparatus, despite the low pressure, and his skin was a blotchy mottled pink and grey.

"…The master," he went on. "Onespawn… needed to accommodate its increasing size… as it consumes the mass of the ship."

"_Wernstrom_!" Farnsworth growled. "What's your stake in all this, you ruffian?"

Wernstrom clutched his now oddly-oversized head as if suffering a migrane. "Master has forgotten me," he rasped. "Now repairs to the dark matter engines are complete… Master doesn't need me now… Master doesn't care if I'm alive or dead…" He began to sob pitifully, and Farnsworth and Mom gave each other a meaningful glance.

"Onespawn has discarded me," Wernstrom said. "Now I'm free… free and clear, with the weight of all who've died, and all who are yet to, pressing down upon me…"

Mom stepped forward to shake sense into the blubbering man, but Farnsworth held her back, leaning close to her ear as if to whisper.

"He's infected, don't touch him!" he shouted loudly, making the old woman cringe. "You stupid punk, Wernstrom," the Professor went on, "you botched this entire mission. I give you the most vile, humiliating score yet – a B+."

Wernstrom wailed in anguish. "I deserve it," he said. "You were always the better scientist, Hubert… I'm just a third rate hack, always riding on your labcoat-tails. I thought with this I'd be able to surpass you… but instead the thing has killed off most of my crew… and left me a mutated pariah chained to an alien will that screetches and burns in my mind. You are the better man! The better scientist! You always were!"

Farnsworth looked up from studying the seams in his pressure glove. "Huu-whaa?" he grunted. "I'm sorry, were you still talking? I drifted off there for a bit…"

"Wernstrom, snap out of it," Mom said. "What do you know about all of this?"

"Everything…" Wernstrom clutched at his head again and doubled over in pain. "It's in my mind…" he hissed. "…In my DNA… Onespawn – I'm a part of it now, I hear its thoughts. It plans… to use its own version of the same wormhole technology we used to bring it back to his Universe… only on a much larger and less specific scale…"

"What do you mean?" Mom pressed impatiently.

"It has some quantum flux connecting it to spacetime…" Wernstrom said. "Soon it will be able to use that, coupled with understanding gleaned from the hardware aboard this ship… to destroy… to _unmake_ the Universe, by compressing all of space and time into a singularity…"

"I tried to do that once," Farnsworth said. "But I couldn't get a chalkboard long enough to fit the equations."

"There is only one thing preventing Onespawn's plan…" Wernstrom said. "The presence of a temporal paradox… an entity spawned by spontaneous self-manifestation whose very tenacious history-spanning existence will hold the fabric of spacetime together…"

"Fry!" Farnsworth said.

Wernstrom nodded. "…So now the creature will travel to Earth… to kill the one being who could stand in its way."

As if on cue, the massive vessel trembled suddenly, and the team stumbled as artificial gravity took a moment to adjust for inertia. A deep bass reverberation of space compression hummed through the ship.

"Dark matter drive just came online," Larry said unnecessarily. "The ship could reach Earth within the hour now…"

"Quickly, Wernstrom!" Mom snapped. "Where is this 'Onespawn' of yours?"

Wernstrom appeared wracked by pain, and veins in his temples throbbed visibly. "I will… take you…" he said, fighting off the looming presence of the alien mind that pressed against his own. He set off down a side corridor with the team following close behind.

In space, the Momship struggled to keep up with the larger vessel as it hurled through the void, dark matter engines flaring incandescent blue.

The distance to Earth began to shrink rapidly.

* * *

The hall of forever, ten miles west of the exact centre of the Universe, loomed above the parked ship as Nibbler led the three Planet Express friends down the landing stair. A pair of Nibblonian officials waited at the foot of the steps, dressed in turquoise robes, and they raised their paws in salute.

"We bid you greetings, Lord Nibbler and company," they said in unison.

Nibbler returned the salute wordlessly and walked past them. The others followed, and Bender carelessly trod on one of the officials.

"Those little things look just like Leela's pet," the robot noted distantly, kicking the dazed Nibblonian off his foot.

"Of course they do," Fry said. "Bender, haven't you been paying attention to what's going on?"

"I've made a point not to," Bender replied, folding his arms. "Any situation that doesn't revolve around yours truly isn't worth a moment's consideration."

They moved onward through the plush gardens and meadows. Fry glanced around at the fluffy pink scenery. "Yeah, now I remember," he said. "This place is really…" he searched for a word.

"Gaudy? Candyfloss?" Leela offered.

"I'd have said _queer_," Bender grunted coarsely, and the others glared at him, Nibbler bearing his fangs. "What?!" Bender said indignantly. "We're a trillion miles away from the nearest censor, so you politically-correct ---holes can go ---- yourselves."

"_Bender_!" Leela exclaimed in horror, and slapped the robot's face, bruising her fingers in the process.

"Hey, ---- off!"

Nibbler rolled one and a half pairs of eyes and scurried off toward the hall's entrance without bothering to check that his three strange humanoid companions were following. A weak bugle announced his arrival as he passed between the twin obelisks and waddled into the hall of forever, moving through the cavernous interior toward the elevated chairs of the high council at one end.

One chair was notably empty. Nibbler took in the absence of Ken with a heavy sigh.

"The four greetings to you, Lord Nibbler, and to your companions." Fiona's voice rang out across the hall.

Nibbler stopped before her seat and looked up at the Nibblonian leader sternly.

"I have travelled far and braved many perils in bringing the Mighty One here to the completion of his destiny," he said. "Twice we have set him against the great foe, and twice he smote them."

"Go me!" Fry shouted, pumping the air with his fist. His voice echoed around the quiet chamber, with scores of Nibblonian faces around the hall regarding him in bemusement.

"…Why then," Nibbler went on, ignoring the interruption, "do you now suggest we act without the aid of this child of prophecy, upon whom we have pinned our hopes for eons?"

"Because the Mighty One failed," Fiona said.

"Did not!" Fry exclaimed defensively, and Leela placed a hand on his arm to silence him.

"Banishing the Brainspawn has now allowed for the creation of a new threat, greater than any we have perviously faced – using the Mighty One availed us nothing, therefor we must turn to another solution."

Nibbler glanced around at the other members of the council, seeing hints of uncertainty and fear in their faces. Many of them showed signs of the cosmic stigma (his own had now spread down one leg).

"The Mighty One's true function was never utilized," Nibbler said loudly, raising his paws as if beckoning the assemby to heed his word. "His role was never to banish the Brainspawn, but to set right the great fracture by weilding the Lance of Fate against them!"

Excited chittering emenated from the Nibblonians, escalating to the eruption of full-blown arguments and hissing.

"The _what_ of _what_?" Fry muttered, raising an eyebrow.

"Silence!" Fiona shouted, and then when the hubbub died down she declared: "The Lance cannot be used!"

"Do you seek to convince me?" Nibbler asked, glancing around at the hall full of small three-eyed creatures. "…Or them? It appears your opinion is not as universal as you would like to believe."

Fiona glowered at Nibbler. And for the first time Fry and Leela saw a Nibblonian actually look as fearsome as they claimed to be.

"If he uses it," she seethed, "then our race, in this form, will cease to exist."

"_Whoa_!" Fry said, stepping forward. "Time out, guys! What the heck are you talking about? What's the Lance of Fate?

Curious yammering erupted from the onlooking creatures.

"He does not know?"

"Know he does not!"

"Know not, does he?"

Fiona's voice cut across the others. "He doesn't _need_ to know!" she shouted, and then when the noise died down she addressed Fry in a tone of forced kindness: "Your Mightiness," she said, "you have aided us in the past, and that assistance has been greatly appreciated – but the time has come for a new course. We are beyong the foretelling of prophecy now."

"And what course will that be?" Nibbler demanded.

Fiona paused for a moment, as if unsure of how to proceed, then steeled herself. "We will make an alliance against Onespawn," she said. "An alliance… with the Brainspawn."

Nibbler's eyes went wide. Fry and Leela gasped. Bender lesiurely exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke.

"You cannot be serious?" Nibbler exclaimed.

"The rest of the Brainspawn race are every bit as threatened as we by the scurge of Onespawn," Fiona said. "Contact with them has already been made through the underspace immersion array, and they have agreed to a truce for the duration of our war against this new common enemy. Preparations are being made even now to return them to this dimensional plane. They will help us fight…"

"And should this alliance succeed," Nibbler said incredulously, "your new allies will then return to their own goal of understanding and destroying everything – there can be no victory."

"That will be a bridge to be crossed at such time as it is reached," Fiona said gravely. "For now, it is better the devil we know."

"But we can stop them, once and for all," Nibbler argued, desperate now. "Trillions of lives can be saved!"

"Lord Nibbler!" Fiona shouted. "If you have nothing to offer but notions of doubt and pointless fatalism then you should leave this chamber! We are in a time of crisis and for the good of our own people we must make difficult decisions."

"But not the decision that acknowledges our true role…" Nibbler said bitterly, slumping his shoulders.

"_Begone_!" The command echoed in the hall of forever; Nibbler growled and turned away, scampering from the chamber with Fry, Leela, and Bender in tow.

"Well, this has all been a big waste of my valuable time," Bender remarked irritably when they'd gathered together outside again.

Nibbler stared up into the soft cherry sunlight and sighed in exhaustion and defeat.

"Nibbler?" Leela knelt down beside the creature, and out of habit began scratching him behind the ear, making him coo and purr despite himself. "Explain," she went on. "What is this 'Lance of Fate', and why don't the others want it to be used?"

"Very well," Nibbler murmured, leaning into her hand. "I shall tell you, but not here in the open – let us return to the ship, that we may consume sustainence."

Leela picked him up, and together they all headed back to the Planet Express ship.

* * *

As the _SS Breznhev_ hurtled through space at arround 99.9 of increased lightspeed, Mom, Farnsworth, and the rest of the incursion team followed Wernstrom through corridors until they abruptly reached a vast open area that had been carved out of the ship's interior, massively wide, and many decks high.

The enormous cavern was alive with nanotech pseudopods that snaked across every surface, all leading back to the _thing_ that took up most of the space.

"Jeezalu!" Mom said. "That's some growth spurt!"

Onespawn towered above them all, easily fifty feet high, surrounded by hard chitenous columns of nanomachine growth that branched from its tissue and away into the ship.

Wernstrom cowered in a corner.

"Simply amazing!" Farnsworth said, snatching one of the scientists' Tricorders to examine its readout.

"Does it know we're here?" Mom asked.

"Amazingly, no!" Farnsworth replied. "I'd imagine if it did, it would have rendered us idiots and we'd all be licking the floor and taking Fox News reports as factual right now. No, it seems all the neural pulses are directed through the nano-structure for the time being." He tapped his shielding helmet. "Looks like they're working."

"Right," Mom said briskly, turning to her men. "You all know what has to be done."

"Yes ma'am," the head security man said. Quickly and efficiently, the uniformed operatives moved out around Onespawn's sanctum, placing the cases they carried on the floor a circular formation, roughly equidistant.

"Hydrogen bombs with a phased antimatter tamper," Mom explained. "It's a configuration that's not officially supposed to exist. They call them 'Planet-Buster' nukes." She gestured to a transmittor device affixed to her belt. "I can set them off by subspace signal when we're safely away."

Farnsworth grunted, not really listening, and continued to study the Tricorder readout. "This is interesting," he said. "The creature's brainwave patterns are so fluid… its mind must be like an open barn door – receptive to any suggestion, like a child willing to believe in fantasy…"

"That is how the Brainspawn were first expelled from Earth," Wernstrom said weakly from the corner. "A deception… a fiction…"

"Who cares?" Mom said, glancing at her watch. "We're about to blow the thing into less than atoms and be back home in time for supper."

As the security personnel moved around Onespawn's sanctum, one of them stepped mistakenly onto a thick fibrous tendril of nanite growth. His boot cracked the outer crust and sunk in up to the ankle as a wet slurry of nanomachines adheared to the fabric.

As the man struggled to free himself, Onespawn stirred, with a faint blue glow beginning to issue from around the giant brain. The nano-structure alerted him to the presence of an unknown contaminant, Onespawn scanned around itself, noting at last the subversive software that was corrupting the survaillance cameras. It cleared them and at once beheld a group of invaders clustered around, somehow shielded from mental detection.

Onespawn let out a tremendous psychic howl that had the incursion team dropping to the floor in agony. When the onslaught ceased, they all blinked stupidly and got to their feet, staring up at the gigantic brain in rapt fascination.

"Big pinky balloon!" Mom said. "Me want!"

In the corner, Wernstrom shuddered as waves of stupifaction washed over him, having no effect now that his mind had been completely sumsumed. Onespawn's monumental will groped inside his head, taking charge of synapses and directing his thoughts once again. In a zombie-like state, he surged to his feet, struggling painfully all the while, and began walking stiffly toward one of the security men who was peering into the end of his own rifle.

"I think _Enterprise_ was a worthy and well-executed prequel to the Original Series," Farnsworth declared as he repeatedly slapped his own helmet.

"I forgot what I'm meant to do after I exhale!" Larry gasped, clutching his chest and turning blue.

Wernstrom, controlled by Onespawn, staggared up to the security man and grabbed hold of his positron rifle. The man looked bewildered.

"I want to call my girlfriend but I can't get a signal on that thing," he said.

Wernstrom gritted his teeth, trying to fight the alien influence, but failed.

"No…!" he groaned weakly.

He shot the man at point blank range, cringing mentally when droplets of blood spattered against him. He turned and shakily levelled the rifle at another security operative, who tried to fire back, but was holding the gun backwards and blew away a sizable chunk of his own head.

"People fall down!" Mom noted curiously, looking at the dead bodies.

"You big meanie!" Larry shouted at Wernstrom. Wernstrom shot him in the chest with a cry of agonized anguish, and he fell smoking to the deck.

"Noooo!" Mom cried, falling to her knees beside Larry's prone form. "Don't die! Mommy's favourite son!"

Wernstrom swung the positron rifle to point at Farnsworth, who smiled stupidly.

"The Professy can't die," he said confidently. "This writer only kills ancillory characters, cannon-fodder for perfunctory bloodbaths that the main characters somehow always manage to escape with only minor injuries… duh, perhaps until right at the end when there's an unexpected twist…"

"_What_?" Wernstrom and Onespawn both replied in synchronized confusion.

"…Run," Wernstrom said through clenched teeth, looking at Farnsworth over the trembling sights of the rifle. "Get out… I can't fight it… too strong."

Curiously, Farnsworth reached out and poked his finger into the gun barrel.

"Oh you stupid old bastard!" Wernstrom growled angrily, and for a moment he felt something give in his mind, as if one of Onespawn's talons had torn free. His finger trembled on the trigger and he let out a low growl. Onespawn's will screamed at him across the psychic link, pushing him to finish the job – to exterminate the invaders and deactivate the bombs.

"…Shut up," Wernstrom hissed in agony. "Shut up, you gigantic moron…" Another facet of mental subsumption seemed to tear, and blood began to flow from Wernstrom's nose. He pulled the rifle away from Farnsworth and pointed it at Onespawn.

The alien brain's fury rippled out as a wave of telekinetic energy that lifted Wernstrom and the others from their feet and slammed them into the bulkhead.

"Owwie!" Mom complained, sliding down the wall. "Metal hard!"

"Metal indeed hard!" Farnsworth agreed, finding himself upside-down on the floor. "Even Slipknot, which really is metal and not stupid poser garbage at all!"

Wernstrom fell to the floor, bleeding and sobbing. For the moment it seemed Onespawn's control of his mind was gone, but he could already feel the nanomachine structures in his brain beginning to reform synaptic links. Time was short.

"Come on!" he shouted to the others. "Follow me!"

They stared at him blankly.

"…Let's go get ice cream!" he added.

Mom, Farnsworth, and the rest of the team followed happily while Onespawn pulsed and screetched behind them. Moving as fast as he could, Wernstrom ran through the corridors, hoping that the others could keep up.

In the sanctum, Onespawn strained against the nanomachine columns and vines that held the creature enthroned to the ship. It couldn't move, and was unable to do anything about the bombs that sat around the floor with red lights blinking their armed state. It roared and cursed and spat and seethed, helplessly…

The Brezhnev's escape pods hadn't been used by the ill-fated research team due to their remoteness from any possible aid and the fact they'd been confident in their ability to destroy the rogue Brainspawn. Now Wernstrom ushered Mom's incursion team into one of the pods with the promise of frozen treats, pausing to snatch the transmitter off the old woman's belt as she went.

"Mine!" Mom said sulkily.

"I'm just borrowing it." Wernstrom replied.

Farnsworth was the last inside, and he looked at Wernstrom expectantly.

"Werny coming too?" he asked stupidly, and Wernstrom shook his head and hit the emergency eject button. The escape pod closed up and launched from its tube, out into open space. He watched the Brazhnev's defensive systems try to shoot down the pod, but the Momship flew an intercept course and took a few hits for the little module before recovering it and rocketing away to standoff range.

Wernstrom looked around him at the nanotech growth that was detaching from the walls and ceiling to snake toward him with intent. Onespawn scrabbled desperately to reclaim control of his mind. He looked at the transmitter in his hand and sighed.

"It's probably too much to ask," he said to himself, "that I be remembered for this, instead of everything else…"

With that, he pushed the detonate button.

The planet-buster nukes exploded simultaneously, and in a heartbeat most of the mass of the Brezhnev was converted directly into x-rays and gamma radiation in a burst that rivalled a supernova. Planets in a nearby system were scoured of their atmospheres and far away on Earth the conflagaration would appear in less than an hour as the brightest light in the night sky.

The Momship was buffeted by concussive waves of hard radiation and subspace compression, and was left temporarily dead in the water, with its outer hull shedding globules of white-hot molten metal.

As the corona dissipated and the Momship gradually came back online, the survivors of the incursion team climbed out of the nanomachine-encrusted escape pod inside the hangar bay, to be met by a decontamination squad.

"What the hell happened?" Mom asked as she was sprayed in an undignified manner by nanite-retardant foam.

"I don't remember," Farnsworth said, furrowing his brow. "Who are all you people?"

"The Brezhnev exploded," one of the hazmat-wearing deck hands informed them through a blank facemask.

Mom looked around. "Where's Larry?" she asked suddenly.

Nobody had an answer, and she stared silently at her hands.

After their cell door malfunctioned in the Electromagnetic pulse, Hermes, Amy, and Scruffy made their way to the bridge of the ship, appearing at the same time as Mom and Farnsworth arrived, still dripping with foam.

"How the hell did you people get out?" Mom said, withoug her usual level of hostility. She was tired and distant.

"Scruffy could fix you up with some better locks," Scruffy muttered.

They moved out onto the bridge proper, and Gary Helm, the Helmsman, got up from the Helm and gave Mom a clumsy salute. She pushed past him and looked through the forward viewscreen at the expanding rings of plasma and gaseous remains of the Brezhnev.

"It's gone?" she asked of the crew in general.

"We think so," the Helmsman said. "Sensors are still degraded – the EM background is a mess. But nothing could have survived that."

Mom stared in silence, and Farnsworth moved to join her. For long minutes they continued to watch the slowly-cooling cloud of radioactive matter, before the Professor finally spoke.

"…Caroline," he said softly. "It's time to go. I don't remember why we're standing here, but my feet hurt."

"I have to know for certain," Mom said, ignoring the forbidden use of her real name. "I have to know it's dead."

So they stood and waited. Time wafted by.

Suddenly, sensors on the ship began to emit high-pitched chimes and beeps. Technicians looked up in alarm. Something was materialising out of the irradiated cloud.

"…It can't be…" the Helmsman said.

"Full magnification!" Mom demanded.

The screen zoomed in, and a horrified gasp escaped the lips of all those present.

"Gluck!" Amy said.

"That tenacious bastard," Mom muttered in barely-controlled fury.

Out in space, the disaperate molecules of Onespawn swam back together, pulled at by the creature's mysterious quantum flux, and reassembled. The giant alien brain floated free, where the Breznhev had once been.

And it wasn't happy.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Weapon of No Choice

The portal superstructure was comprised of five pylons arranged in a circle, each nearly a kilometre tall, that hummed with esoteric energies. It was on an isolated patch of the Eternium tundra that showed signs of much recent activity conducted very quickly.

As the sun began to set, the Nibblonian council delegation arrived at the site by hovercraft, and Fiona stepped off to survey the ugly towers of hastily cobbled-together technology.

"Is it ready?" she asked one of the technical specialists nearby.

"Yes," he replied glumly.

"The humans have already opened the way," she said placatingly. "We are only hastening that which is inevitable. Do it."

With a recalcitrant growl, the technician reluctantly activated a remote control device, and the pylons' hum increased a hundredfold.

Forks of purple lightning arced out into the open area between them toward a point of glaring iridescence poised in the air between the spires of machinery, which crackled and expanded into a vast rippling sphere of dimensional displacement…

The observing Nibblonians backed away fearfully.

* * *

Inside the Planet Express ship, Nibbler told a tale as he sat surrounded by the remains of three hams.

"Thirteen-point-seven billion Earth years ago," he said, "the Universe was created in the mass quantum-inversion event that you know as the 'big bang'."

"Thirteen-point-seven billion…" Fry repeated, scratching his chin. "Was that before or after the moon landings?"

"In the crucible of that inversion," Nibbler went on, ignoring him, "The Brainspawn were created as the mirror of my race, this you know. However, at the same instant, the energy discharge of that unnatural inversion solidified into a mass of pure condensed spacetime, a temporal waste-product, if you will, that links the two races and remained here at the centre of the expanding Universe until our ancient sages recovered it. Knowing the power it held, but unable to weild it theselves, they fashioned it into the form of a weapon, the Lance of Fate, and stored it here until the fabled Mighty One appeared – for he, with his unique relationship to time, is the only one who can use it."

"Use it for what?" Leela asked.

"Reunification," Nibbler said simply. "If used correctly, against the primary brain in the Brainspawn collective, the Lance could fuse the Nibblonians and Brainspawn back together into one race."

"Then when Fiona said that you'd cease to exist 'in this form'… she was telling the truth?" Leela said, aghast. "What would you become?"

"Indeterminate," Nibbler replied. "And that uncertainty is the reason my people long ago decided that the Lance would not be used, deciding instead to pursue alternate means, which I always felt to be of questionable merit. Many agree with me, but they are frightened by the prospect of losing all that we are. Billions of years of history and culture is a difficult thing to let go of…"

"Wait," Bender said, ceasing his feigned disinterest. "Why would you want to combine with those giant brain things and turn into something else if you don't even know what you'll be?"

"If it will end the blight of the Brainspawn forever," Nibbler growled, "then that sacrifice is miniscule." He turned away. "The Brainspawn exist because of us… they are a part of us. It is our duty."

"Duty?" Leela repeated, picking Nibbler up and holding him before her. "You won't even be _you_ anymore…" She found herself anguished by the idea.

"Leela…" Nibbler said softly. "Gentle Leela, you have always cared for me, protected me. You stand as testament to the majesty of life that exists within the Universe. It is for you and all those like you that my people should make this stand – to prevent the destruction of beauty and love and all the potential for those most precious jewels yet to be born."

"But…" Leela's lip trembled. "Surely… there must be another way?"

"No," Nibbler replied. "It is the course we were destined to take, from the very beginning. All other avenues, taken out of fear, merely delayed what must ultimately be." He smiled at her. "It is all right," he said.

Leela could think of nothing else to say, so she hugged Nibbler close. Fry and Bender looked at each other and shrugged.

* * *

The massive dimensional portal fluxed and pulsed, kicking up a great wind that roared across the plain. Within the spherical event horizon there were shapes. At first they seemed to be at some impossible distance, but soon came closer to the shimmering field of energy, resolving into individual blob-like forms.

"They're coming!" one of the observing Nibblonians shouted. "Oh, by the living Fates – _what have we done_?"

"Hold steady!" Fiona yelled.

"We should have listened to Lord Nibbler!" another said.

"_Silence_!"

The swarm reached the event horizon and squeezed through. Hundreds, then thousands, and then millions. They came through the energy curtain, crackling with interdimensional discharges, and filled up the darkening sky – an onslaught of flying brains.

The Nibblonians stood looking up at the Brainspawn horde, and the Brainspawn regarded their eternal enemies. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.

* * *

Nibbler grimaced suddenly. "They're here," he grunted.

"Who?" Fry said.

"The Brainspawn… the rest of them."

Leela moved automatically toward the helm. "Let's get out of here," she said.

"No – wait!" Nibbler said. "Now may be our only opportunity to recover the Lance, the council and its forces will be occupied liasing with their reluctant new allies…"

"Well, come on then!" Fry said. "Where is it?"

"Terminal Precept. Follow me," Nibbler replied, leaping from Leela's arms and scampering out and down the landing stairs.

Twilight was beginning to coalesce around the Hall of Forever as the little group hurried back inside. The interior of the hall was now deserted, and Nibbler ran to the centre of the wide empty floor. His third eye pulsed a telepathic entry code, and a circular section of the floor suddenly subsided, dropping down into recesses in progressively deeper segments to form a spiral staricase that wound down into shadows.

Wordlessly, the group descended.

Around and around the staircase went, going deeper and deeper into the planet's crust. For what seemed like an eternity they tramped onward in the dark. At length the stairs gave way to a gravelly slope that continued downward in a straight line. Their footfalls echoed around them now, bouncing back and fourth in such a way that they sensed a vast open space. Water dripped somewhere – they'd entered a natural cave system.

"How much further?" Bender asked irritably.

"We're close," Nibbler said. "Behold."

Far ahead, a weak light gleamed within the heart of darkness, and the group hurried onward. As they neared, the light resolved into two pale glowing columns that marked the opening into another chamber beyond.

"We are about to enter Terminal Precept," Nibbler said. "This is where the Lance of Fate has been stored for eons. Though my forebears denied its use, it could not be destroyed, so they kept it here."

"What does it look like?" Fry asked.

"I do not know. I have never seen it."

They moved through the adjoining passage into the soft light cast by the glowing columns, and found themselves standing on a ledge that overlooked a massive cavern, the far side of which was obscured by shadow. The cavern didn't appear to have a bottom – just an abysmal hungry darkness that hid an unfathomable depth. Fry kicked a rock off the ledge and it spiralled away down and down into the dark. Though he listened closely, he could hear no impact.

In the centre of the immense void, a single column of pale stone stood, reaching to the ceiling and down into the impenetrable gloom below. It was connected to the ledge by a very narrow stone bridge, with no railing…

"Well you can cram this up wherever you little three-eyed critters traditionally cram things," Bender said, backing away from the edge. "There's no way I'm going out there."

"Only one of us has to," Nibbler said, glancing at Fry. "The containment column is designed only to open for the Mighty One."

"Argh," Fry groaned, pulling a face at Nibbler and thumbing in Bender's direction. "Bite his shiny metal ass," he muttered.

Nibbler shrugged apologetically, and Fry started toward the precarious-looking bridge with another put-upon groan.

"Halt!" a voice bellowed, echoing around the vast cavern. Fry paused, and the others looked around. From an alcove above the entryway, two Nibblonian warriors emerged, hopping down the uneven stone wall with their little swords held at the ready and their armour gleaming in the light.

"We've been ordered to deny you access," one of them said. "Please leave immediately!"

"Oh, they're so cute in their little armours," Leela said, clasping her hands in delight.

The two guards glanced at each other in irritation, and the one who had spoken earlier turned to look at Nibbler.

"Lord Nibbler," he said. "I have the greatest respect for you – please do not make this harder than it needs to be."

Nibbler regarded the warriors for a long moment, and then spoke levelly.

"I have come here to complete our destiny," he said, and gestured at Fry, who had taken a moment to pick his nose. "The Mighty One will weild the Lance of Fate, and so end the threat of the Brainspawn - _forever_. This is the cause that we and our forebears have sworn to uphold. You would stand in the way of that? Now? At the cumulation of all things?"

The two warriors looked uncertain.

"Do not be afraid," Nibbler told them. "We each of us are prepared to give our lives to the fulfillment of our great labour – but we do not have to. The fracture can be mended, and the disparate elements of reality can be reunited. The Universe will be safe."

The guards had nothing to say. Nibbler nodded at them in understanding and looked up at Fry. "Please retrieve the Lance," he said.

Fry stepped gingerly onto the bridge, and swayed with vertigo as the dark abyss below seemed to pull at him. Sense of balance and spatial orientation both abandoned him simultaneously and he wobbled from side to side. Suddenly a strong hand clasped his shoulder and held him steady.

"Together," Leela said, close to his ear, her breath warm against his skin. "We'll do this together."

Fry smiled gratefully, and as one they moved out onto the narrow strip of stone, edging forward, one foot at a time.

"Wait!" one of the Nibblonian warriors said uncertainly, and Fry and Leela glanced back. "…Good luck," the warrior finished. He and his companion glanced at each other, and then scampered away down the entry passage.

"Take great care!" Nibbler called anxiously, as Fry and Leela resumed their slow edging progress.

"If you two die, I'm pawning your stuff!" Bender added.

Fry gritted his teeth in determination; confidence seemed to flow into him from Leela's hand resting firmly on his shoulder.

"Halfway there," Leela said. "You're doing great."

"Thanks Leela," Fry said. They moved onward, and the central column gradually grew nearer. Suddenly, from out of the depths, a swarm of shrieking winged creatures erupted around them, screeching and shooting past, dangerously close on both sides.

"_Bats_!" Leela cried, swatting at the creatures.

"They aren't bats!" Nibbler shouted from across the cavern. "They're cave Wyverns. Similar to bats, but poisonous!"

Fry and Leela screamed and began flailing wildly at the Wyverns. Leela's lack of depth perception caused some distance confusion in the half-light, and she flinched backwards reflexivly when one of the creatures looked closer to her face than it was. Her boot met empty air, and she suddenly found herself dropping into open space without time to even swear.

Hands caught her by the armpits, and she swung over the infinite black drop, looking up into Fry's face as he held onto her, laying flat on his belly across the stone bridge. The swarm of Wyverns passed, shrieking away into the gloom, and Leela scrabbled for a grip on the rock. With Fry's help, she managed to pull herself up onto the bridge, and they sat together for a moment, panting.

"You okay?" Fry said.

"I think so, thanks," Leela replied. She narrowed her eye and shouted over to Nibbler: "Any other surprises down here?"

"Negative!" Nibbler shouted back, and then muttered quietly to Bender: "Besides the Baldrog, of course, but it's usually hibernating at this time of year."

Fry and Leela continued their precarious, painstaking journey, and arrived finally at the central column, where a ledge encircled the pale stone trunk. It was smooth, with an almost marble-like surface, which Fry ran his hands over.

"It's warm," he said. "Like a bottle of beer left out in the sun."

"How does it open?" Leela said.

"Why would you want to open a warm beer?"

"No, the column…"

"Oh, I dunno," Fry said. "Maybe there's a rock with a key under it…" He began looking around on the ledge, and suddenly the column began to glow with a pale warm light.

"_Idiocy level identified correct_," a soft psychic voice said. "_Access granted_."

"Hey, I did it!" Fry grinned as a large section of the column disappeared, revealing a deep alcove. He and Leela peered inside and gasped in wonder.

Suspended in a beam of turquoise light, the Lance of Fate hung poised in glittering splendour, its shaft of exotic metal reflecting brilliantly, and the curved blade, fashioned from the condensed fabric of spacetime itself, was alive with wild and incomprehensible power… at times their eyes seemed to slide around it, and then it would change, and they'd feel as if they were being drawn in.

"Wow," Leela said, looking away and blinking. "I feel like I'll have a seizure if I look at that thing too long."

Fry squinted at the Lance and tilted his head to one side. "I think I see it," he said. "A bunny rabbit?"

"It isn't a magic-eye thing, Fry," Leela said patiently. "Come on, just grab it and let's get out of here before those Wyverns come back."

Fry reached into the light, feeling his skin tingle with unknown energy. As his hands closed around the Lance, a ripple of temporal disturbance radiated out from the blade of the weapon as it responded to Fry's out-of-phase molecules. For a moment, every sentient being on the planet experienced a strong sense of déjà vu.

"Didn't we do this before?" Leela said in sudden confusion.

"No, you're thinking of the time we had to steal the Spear of Destiny from the Louvre," Fry said absently, testing the weight of the weapon in his hands. It was surprisingly light.

Leela reached out curiously to touch the mindbending blade of the Lance, and for an instant she seemed to morph in and out of phase with regular time, appearing as an infant, a pimply teenager, an adult, an elderly woman with grey hair, and finally a dust-covered skeleton.

Fry cried out in shock and horror at the sight, pulling the Lance away from her. She returned to her normal appearance and frowned at him in puzzlement.

"What's the matter?" she asked, unaware of the temporal compression that had just taken place.

"N…nothing," Fry said, visibly shaken. The vision of a skull with a single central eye socket was caught in his mind, no matter how hard he tried to bury it. He swallowed and tried to smile for Leela, who was looking at him oddly. A slight tremble in the ledge beneath their feet provided a distraction and they both looked around, noticing a deep background rumble that was growing louder.

Across the cavern, Nibbler bared his teeth in alarm as stones began to dislodge from the cavern walls and clatter around him and the robot.

"I did not know of this," he said. "A final defensive mechanism… _you must flee_!"

"Cheese it!" Bender seconded.

A boulder the size of a house dropped past them in ponderous silence, and Fry and Leela needed no further prompting. Taking much less care this time, they began to run across the narrow stone bridge as fast as they could go, while the central column shattered behind them, and the cavern ceiling began to crumble down around their ears…

The chamber was self-destructing.

* * *

"…So we have an accord?" Fiona asked the Big Brain, as it hovered several feet above her. The other Nibblonians hung back, growling and gnashing their teeth.

"Yes, yes!" the Brain pulsed irritably in its rounded androgynous voice. "Now just stop thinking so much… argh, it hurts!"

Fiona inclined her head, then glanced up when an aide prodded her shoulder and whispered in her ear. Her three eyes widened.

"That impulsive idiot!" she said.

"A problem?" the Big Brain pulsed.

"One of my kind," Fiona said awkwardly. "…Is trying to make off with the Lance of Fate…"

"The Lance of Fate?" the Brainspawn seethed, and the incredulity and horror of it's the rest of the horde could be felt despite their high-altitude positions. "But you agreed long ago that it would never…"

"This is just one Nibblonian!" Fiona said hurriedly.

"Well the Lance is useless without the Mighty One in any case," the Brainspawn said.

Fiona cleared her throat uncomfortably. "He… he has the Mighty One with him."

Although a creature with no throat or lungs shouldn't technically gasp, the Brainspawn did away with logic for the duration and did just that. "They must be stopped!" it said.

"Agreed," Fiona replied.

With that, the Brainspawn floated away quickly, and Fiona headed back to the hovercraft. The other Nibblonians eyed her, some with simple uncertainty, but others now with undisguised malice. She didn't care – the future of their species was at stake, and sacrifices had to be made.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: From Eternium With Love

Onespawn pursued the fleeing spacecraft with a vengeance, calling forth powerful blasts of energy from within itself and sending them lancing across the void in spectacular crimson bolts. The destruction of the _Brezhnev_ had stripped it of its nanites for the time being, until it could produce more, and the power needed to reassemble itself had left it weakened. But the changes Onespawn had wrought within itself remained intact, as did the mysterious quantum flux that seemed to grow even stronger now.

The Momship darted around in three dimensions, jack-knifing to avoid the devestating psychoplasmic discharges that lit up space like a Freedom Day parade. Everyone onboard was thrown about violently each time one of the blasts erupted nearby.

"Sweet chimpanzee of Tokyo-Three!" Hermes said, clinging to a console. "We canna take much more of this, mon!"

Mom picked herself up out of Scruffy's lap and gave the janitor a perfunctory slap just in case he'd been having any lewd thoughts.

"Can't you shake the damn thing?" she bellowed at the Helmsman.

"I'm trying!" Gary Helm replied as he swung the control column hard over. "It's matching us move-for-move. I don't know what it uses for propulsion, but from the Gs its pulling on some of those turns, I'd say it could fly rings around us."

Another close explosion lifted them from their feet, and Mom found herself in Scruffy's lap once again. This time she punched him in the stomach.

"Scruffy's a punchin' bag fer angry women," he grunted. "An' he finds it strangely arousin'."

"We need a diversion," Mom said. "Something to throw the bastard off our ass!"

"I have an idea!" Amy piped-up, and Mom waved her away irritably.

"Perhaps some kind of genetically-engineered albino gorilla fired at the creature…?" Farnsworth mumbled.

Amy raised her hand. "We could lure it to…"

"Quiet, you little tart!" Mom snapped. "Smart people are talking!"

"_De bu, chao ah lian, __Li lao bu ho ang moh lang kan ka seh li zi pu bor kia_!" Amy muttered darkly. The ship took a direct hit, and fountains of sparks erupted from the bridge consoles.

"I thought I ordered non-exploding consoles installed!" Mom shouted.

"But there was a sale on these ones…" the Helmsman replied.

"Guh!" Amy spat, and pushed past Mom to a navigation console unaffected by the pyrotechnics. Hammering in a set of coordinates, she brought the display up on the main system screen, highlighted in yellow.

Mom stopped yelling at her subordinates and looked up at the screen; it showed a specific star system.

"Omicron Persei…" she said slowly, her eyes widening. "Of course! The stupid little strumpet is onto something – Helm! Plot a course for Omicron Persei Eight!"

"Yes ma'am," Helm replied.

The Momship banked toward Galactic North and Onespawn followed, furiously firing psychoplasmic energy balls after the vessel as it went.

* * *

Terminal Precept, the storehouse of the Lance of Fate, was collapsing.

Leela made it to the ledge with Fry right behind her. He covered the last few feet in a flying leap as the slender strip of stone bridge splintered and fell away into the dark abyss.

"Make haste!" Nibbler shouted unnecessarily, and Leela snatched him up by his cape as, together, the group ran back through the dark passage. Boulders crashed down around them and a tremendous crackling roar filled the air as great slabs of rock fractured.

Bender made it to the stairs first and was struck by several rolling stones, which gathered no moss as they bounced off his metal casing.

"Oh, it's gonna take ages to buff those scratches out!" he lamented.

"There'll be time for buffing later," Leela shouted. "Right now we've gotta polish… I mean _RUN_!"

They ascended the stairs at a mad dash, dodging rocks that fell toward them almost unseen in the gloom.

"Why?" Fry puffed. "Why is it… that everywhere we go… things always collapse on top of us?"

At length, they stumbled up over the top of the staircase, pursued by a cloud of dust, and lay panting on the floor of the hall of forever.

"Well that was enjoyable," Leela grumbled sarcastically. "How about for our next outing we visit the caldera of an active volcano?" They ground was still rumbling beneath them, and cracks suddenly spiderwebbed across the marble floor.

"It's not over!" Nibbler shouted.

"Cheese it again!" Bender added.

As wide fissures opened up in the floor and chunks of pastel-coloured roof crashed down, the friends bolted and leapt through the gauntlet and burst out through the doors into the Eternium evening. Behind them, the hall of forever imploded with a huge crash into a pile of rubble and then began to subside in a massive sinkhole.

Fry, Leela, Bender, and Nibbler stood watching the great collapsed mess of masonry settle into the wide pit.

"Four billion years," Nibbler said sadly. "Four billion years the hall of forever stood…"

"Easy come, easy go," Bender said indifferently.

Fry glanced at Leela, and reached up to gently wipe a smudge of dust from her cheek. She looked at him and smiled, and a quiet moment of inexplicable tension passed between them.

"You look beautiful, even when you're covered in grime," Fry said awkwardly.

"Oh… Fry…" Leela blushed.

Fry scratched his head and looked at the ground. "Hey Leela…" he began hesitantly. "I know you keep saying you only want friendship with me, and maybe that really is all we could be… but I was thinking… since we really seem to be on the knife edge this time around, and the Universe might actually end… if we somehow do manage to survive, why don't you and I…"

"Oh my God!" Leela shouted suddenly, cutting him off. Her eye went wide in horrified disbelief.

"_No, no_ – I wasn't going to say _that_," Fry clarified hurriedly. "I just meant dinner, not the other thing… unless you wanted to afterward, but that isn't what I was driving at… not that I wouldn't love to…"

"No, Fry – _look_!" Leela pointed behind him, and he turned to look. Out over the horizon a swarm of objects filled the sky, gradually growing larger as they approached, and resolving into terrifyingly familiar shapes.

"The Brainspawn," Nibbler said, bearing his fangs. "They come to prevent us taking the Lance."

Fry looked at the ancient weapon still clutched in his hand; its shimmering field of temporal displacement momentarily reflected his own face. "I could use it against them now," he said.

"Negative," Nibbler replied. "For the Lance to fully recombine the entire Brainspawn race, it must strike at the prime brain in the collective hierarchy, that its effects may be linked down to all the others."

"The Big Brain," Leela said, remembering. "That was the controlling brain Fry fought in the library years ago."

"Under normal circumstances, yes," Nibbler said, glaring up at the approaching horde. "But now a new Brainspawn has ascended to become more powerful than the Big Brain, or any other of the vile creatures. It is now the prime."

"…You mean 'Onespawn'," Fry said in realization.

"I hate to interrupt this expositional narrative," Bender said, "but perhaps we ought to be in the process of cheesing it once again?"

The friends turned and ran toward the Planet Express ship as the swarm of brains descended on them. They boarded the ship in a disorganized clatter of feet, and Leela hurried to the bridge where she set about hammering buttons.

"I'll take care of the start-up and pre-flight system preps for you, Fry," she said as unseen machines hummed into life. "You could manage takeoff with the programmed steps; after that it's all just…"

"Huh?" Fry said, looking confused. "_Me_?"

"Yes Fry," Leela said, turning away from the console and taking him by the shoulders. "Once the Brainspawn are close enough to affect us with their stupefaction ray, you'll be the only one who… make… Leela feel all warm and cuddly inside!"

"You make a good point," Fry said, nodding. "Wait… what?"

"…Duh…" Leela grinned vacantly and reached up to tousle Fry's hair. "Orange!" she giggled.

Bender gasped in mortification back at the rear of the cabin. "Ogod ogod ogod!" he cried, clutching at the sides of his head. "Where are my ears? _Where are my ears?!_"

"Uh oh," Fry said. He glanced out the window and saw the swarm of brains much nearer now, projecting long tendrils of blue stupidifiying energy down towards the ship. He quickly jumped into the pilot seat, laying the Lance of Fate on the floor beside him, and hit the landing gear button. The ship's feet retracted, and it fell down hard on its belly with a crash.

"Sorry," Fry grunted, thumbing the antigravs and easing back on the control column. With jerky motions, the Planet Express ship lunged up into the air. The Brainspawn followed close behind and began clustering around the little green freighter, bumping against the hull and shoving it with telekinetic impulses.

Nibbler made a muffled choking sound as he caught the stalk of his third eye and tried to swallow it.

"I want what he's eating!" Leela sulked.

Fry paused with his hand on the dark matter lever and glanced at the Brainspawn in the rear view mirror.

"You're about to suffer _**severe brain-damage**_," he drawled in his best action-hero voice, and then grimaced when he realized the others were too stupid to appreciate his wit. He pushed the lever down and the PE ship shot forward, its main drive exhaust blowing numerous Brainspawn to pieces.

The full dark matter burn within the constraints of an atmosphere set off a cacophony of load warnings as the ship's outer skin heated up and began to ablate from the massive friction. Then it flew free of Eternium's atmosphere, and Fry located the terminus of the spiderhole in a distant elliptical orbit of the system's star. He plotted a course toward it, taking them into the lee of an irregular moonlet.

Gradually, the other three returned to their senses and looked around in confusion.

"Me… feeling… a bit better in… capacity for abstract postulation," Leela said slowly. "Fry – you did it!"

"Yeah, and I told the Brainspawn: '_you're about to suffer severe br_…'"

"So we're home free?" Bender interrupted.

"Not quite," Nibbler said, pointing to the forward screen. Ahead in space, a hazy cloud was growing, separating into individual objects as the distance closed. Swimming into stark clarity…

"Oh, you gotta be bendin' me…" Bender muttered.

The other half of the Brainspawn horde was poised between them and the spiderhole.

"No problem," Fry said with grim determination. "I'll just brawn my way through these brains and we'll…"

He was cut off by the crackle of the communications system coming to life, Fiona appeared through static interference and glowered at them all.

"Lord Nibbler!" she commanded. "Instruct your pet humans to turn their ship around, or we will be forced to fire upon you."

As if on cue, long-range sensors chimed, indicating a mass of small contacts emerging from behind the heavily-cratered moonlet. The Nibblonian second fleet began to close on them from behind.

"Caught between the Nibblonians and the Brainspawn," Fry muttered. "What would MacGyver do?" Struck with sudden inspiration, he pulled a paperclip, a shoelace, and a bottletop out of his pocket and stared at them for a moment. "Damn," he said. "If only I had a cigarette lighter."

Nibbler stared sadly up at Fiona's image

"I cannot comply," he said. "What must be, must be."

"Do not be a fool," Fiona said. "We can annihilate you utterly – you know this."

"Better to die in the pursuit of what is right than live under the shadow of what is wrong," Nibbler replied.

"Uh…" Bender raised a hand. "I, for one, do not share that opinion."

Fiona looked conflicted. "I do not wish to do this," she said. "Please turn back now – return the lance. I do not want to destroy you…"

"Do it," Nibbler said. "Shoot us down, and then ask yourself - of what worth are all our yesterdays if we, in the hour of our final reckoning, discard that last shining inch of ourselves that defines us – our honour and our cause, the small fragile thing that is more important than anything in this Universe we've sworn to protect? To embrace the vile, the tainted…?" Nibbler had riled himself to a near-religious fervour, and he continued, clenching his paws into little fists: "What would we tell those who have gone before us?" he said. "Those, whose toil prepared our path, guided us to this moment in time when the strength of our will and the substance of our being are called upon one last time… what would we tell them?"

Fiona stared at him over the comm. link, her face awash with unknowable emotion. Finally, she sighed. "We would tell them how ashamed we are," she admitted.

"Farewell," Nibbler said. The link went dead. Leela and Bender glanced at each other, and Fry looked bewildered.

"So… what just happened?" he asked. "Is she going to blow us up?"

"We shall know soon enough," Nibbler replied grimly.

The pursuing Nibblonian fleet drew closer as the Planet Express ship continued on toward the Brainspawn blockade. Hundreds of little saucer-shaped ships deployed their weapons systems in preparation, moving in for the kill.

"Maybe someone should man the laser cannon," Leela said uncertainly.

"There would be little point," Nibbler replied.

Still, the fleet came on, and still no shots were fired. A dense atmosphere of tense expectation filled the cabin as all four of them watched the radar monitor.

"What the hell are they waiting for?" Bender muttered.

Suddenly, the fleet decreased speed and began to fall back, and the four friends breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Thankyou," Nibbler said quietly. Perhaps Fiona would still follow her own course, but for now she was willing to allow Nibbler some rein to follow his… maybe only as a last-ditch ace in the hole, but it was something at least.

"We aren't outta the mangroves yet," Fry noted, pointing at the Brainspawn ahead. The brains were apparently undaunted by the Nibblonians' change of heart, and closed ranks in front of the PE ship, projecting a dense field of stupidity.

"Okay guys, time for a little _**brainstorming**_," he said with a grin. Nobody laughed, and he looked around to see Leela clutching a drooling Nibbler like a teddy-bear and sucking her thumb, while Bender tried (with limited success) to climb inside his own chest compartment. The others were again afflicted with total idiocy.

"Aw nuts," Fry muttered, turning back to the control column. "All my best material and nobody to dig it…" He piloted the ship right into the midst of the Brainspawn, slamming heedlessly into scores of bloated pink blobs. The Brainspawn responded by buffeting the PE ship with telekinetic pulses, attempting to throw it offcourse, but Fry smoothly adjusted the controls the way Leela had been teaching him and weaved through the onslaught.

As he flew on toward the looming purple maelstrom of the interdimensional spiderhole, the Brainspawn matched pace, swarming around the ship and buffeting it.

"Quit it!" Fry said through clenched teeth as he and the others were thrown left and right.

"Bouncy ride!" Nibbler squealed with delight, kicking his legs.

"_Weeeeeeeeee_!" Leela seconded.

Vast spiderwebs of negative matter shot past on all sides, and the event horizon approached, shimmering and shifting.

Leela suddenly snuggled up alongside Fry, resting her head in the crook of his neck. "Me love Fry," she said.

Despite the desperate situation and the vast cataclysmic rift in spacetime that loomed seconds away, Fry momentarily broke his concentration to look at her in surprise.

"You what?"

Then they hit the spiderhole, and everything stretched beyond the point of comprehension, before snapping back violently. The ship hurtled through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, tumbling end-over end with Fry struggling frantically to right the trajectory and prevent the little vessel slamming into the deadly edge of the interdimensional tunnel.

The Brainspawn followed, nudging the PE ship, trying to knock it into the negative matter. Fry responded by broadsiding the ship into a group of the creatures and sending them flashing into radioactive doom when they impacted the edge of the spiderhole.

"Don't strain your brain," Fry muttered. He looked ahead, and saw for a brief instant a collossal shape move against the surface of the spiderhole's wall. Then it was gone, phasing out of visibility, but the image of multiple legs hundreds of thousand of miles long gave him the ghost of an idea. He steered the ship toward the side of the swirling tunnel of energy, with the Brainspawn close behind, and switched on the ship's high-beam headlights.

Forked bolts of esoteric energy stabbed out from the wall of the spiderhole as the PE ship flew dangerously close by. The powerful headlights stirred up random disturbances in the torrents of negative energy, until something finally appeared in front of the ship, roused by the commotion. It reared into existence, larger than the mind could fathom – its cluster of multi-faceted eyes rising up like a planet…

The maker of the spiderhole was agitated.

Fry pulled the ship up, soaring over the giant interdimensional arachnid's moon-sized head. The pursuing Brainspawn hesitated, suddenly finding themselves facing one of the mightiest creatures in any Universe.

The Star Spider. Kumonga. Anansi the Trickster. The Weaver. Tsuchigumo. It had many names in many places, but no legend could ever do justice to a creature of such immense terrible majesty. As the little green spaceship flew the length of the creature's vast abdomen and away behind it, the giant spider regarded the tiny swarm of flying brains and decided it didn't like them.

Raising its world-sized form up into the centre of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, it angled gargantuan spinnerets at the Brainspawn and fired million-mile-long strands of negative matter webbing. Each of the brains struck by the strands erupted into bursts of pure energy that filled the spiderhole with incandescent light. The survivors turned and fled they way they had come.

The Planet Express ship burst from the spiderhole terminus and fell almost instantly into the maw of the second. After an intermittant time, it emerged once again into real space, and Fry burnt dark matter at a rapid rate to put as much distance as he could between the ship and whatever might be following. A sheen of nervous perspiration covered his face.

The others had returned to their standard level of intelligence and were looking out the windows for signs of pursuit.

"Looks like you got us through," Leela said to Fry. "Good work."

"It was a _no-brainer_," Fry replied, naturally. Leela chuckled, and he sighed in relief.


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Spit and Wishes

_Jerry, Elaine and Kramer were seated in their usual booth in the coffee shop when George appeared, looking even more downbeat than usual._

_"Hey Georgie!" Kramer said._

_Jerry and Elaine offered their greetings as George slumped down silently next to Elaine._

_"What's the matter?" Jerry asked across the table._

_George shook his head and slowly responded: "My mother caught me…"_

_"'Caught' you? Doing what?"_

_"You know…" The others gave him blank stares, and he continued reluctantly. "I was alone…"_

_Elaine made a surprised face. "You mean…!?"_

_"Uh-huh…"_

_Kramer laughed. "She _caught_ you?"_

Lrrr nudged the television with one massive webbed foot to try to improve the ancient reception, and settled back to watch.

"I've seen this rerun too many times," Ndnd declared, folding her tree-trunk arms.

"It's a classic," Lrrr rumbled menacingly. You'll watch it again and you'll _ENJOY_ it!"

_George continued his story. "…__First she screams, 'George, what are you doing?! My God!' And it looked like she was gonna faint - she started clutching the wall, trying to hang onto it."_

_"Man," Kramer said reflectively._

_"I didn't know whether to try and keep her from falling, or zip up."_

_"What did you do?" Jerry asked in fascination._

_"I zipped up!" George replied._

Lrrr leaned close to Ndnd and muttered: "As the most powerful of them, I do not understand why the one called Kramer does not merely seize control of Manhattan Island in a brutal bloodbath and declare it a breakaway fortress-state."

"Perhaps he is concealing his true ambition until a time of his choosing," Ndnd suggested. "The same way you try to conceal that gut of yours."

Lrrr growled. "Well you…" he said, trying to think of a biting comeback. "…Shut up."

At that moment a palace servant entered the chamber and bowed low.

"Your Excellencies of Divine and Immaculate Wisdom, whose Grace and Valour are an Eternal…"

"Yes, yes!" Lrrr snapped irritably. "What cataclysm could warrant interrupting NBC's primetime lineup?"

"Forgive me!" the servant grovelled. "The long-range defensive array has tracked two large objects entering the system on course for our Great and Magnificent homeworld."

"Ohhhhhhh _wonderful_!" Lrrr growled, pushing himself to his feet and stomping over to the entrance. "My one night of free time, ruined!"

He cast one final glance at the TV where Jerry, George, and Kramer were watching the naked woman in the apartment block across the street, and then with a sigh he stomped out.

"Get some milk and bread on the way back!" Ndnd called out.

* * *

The Momship…

…Bloodied, beaten… with great scorched rends torn in its hull plating, struggled on its erratic course toward the eigth planet of Omicron Persei. Behind it, glowing with livid fury, came Onespawn. The gargantuan brain had resorted to projecting occassional waves of quantum reality displacement that rippled across the void in expanding spheres of weird unreal energy.

One such wave passed through the Momship, making the vessel and everyone onboard twist and bulge into crazy distorted shapes. Then reality snapped back again and they returned to normal.

"Oh, that doesn't bode well," Farnsworth said, looking somewhat mortified by the distortion.

"What does it mean?" Mom asked.

"It means that Wernstrom… _Wernstrom_ was telling the truth," the Professor replied. "With the ability to directly interfere with quantum states, the creature has the potential to literally _unmake_ the Universe!"

Another wave passed through them, and Mom was suddenly joined by seven duplicates of herself which looked at each other in bewilderment before fusing back together into one very confused whole.

"…Really?" she said uncertainly, as the unreal resonances faded. "Well perhaps the Omicronians will have better luck blasting the damn thing – here they come!" She pointed out the main screen, where an armada of massive city-killer ships had departed Omicron Persei VIII's orbit and were moving on an intercept course.

"How do we know they won't blow us up too?" Hermes asked quietly.

"Established literary convention?" Scruffy offered.

A broadwave transmission was picked up by the ship's communication system, and Lrrr appeared onscreen, slightly out of frame.

"Insolent silme!" he bellowed. "I am Lrrr, ruler of Omicron Persei Eight, addressing those fools who dare to attack the homeworld of the Omicronians!" He paused to hurriedly adjust the camera so that his face was centred, but it fell over and he resorted to holding it steady by hand. "…Lousy piece of crap webcam," he muttered, and then continued in his commanding roar. "Hear me now! You have ten seconds to surrender and be destroyed – or we will _destroy_ you!"

The message ended, and the Helmsman went pale, going rigid at the controls as he calculated velocities and trajectories.

"This is going to take some serious _kutzpa_," Helm said.

On the bridge of the Omicronian command vessel, Lrrr watched the Momship approaching.

"Bastard's not even changing course," he muttered in amusement to an aide. "Open fire!"

Magnetic launchers on all the frontline saucer ships opened up simultaneously, hurling ultravelocity kinetic harpoons across the void at near-lightspeed. The Momship's sensors picked up the mass of relatavistic projectiles eating up the distance between them at a frightening rate.

"_Bu hau_!" Amy said, wringing her hands in fright.

"Wait for it," Mom said through gritted teeth as the deadly harpoons drew dangrously near. "Wait…"

At the last moment, Helm banked hard, pulling more Gs than the ship's structural specifications allowed for. The superstructure groaned and creaked in metal anguish, but the big ship managed to corkscrew away from the path of the kinetic harpoons, which flashed past and continued on…

…to slam into Onespawn's unexpecting flank.

A brilliant explosion lit up space.

* * *

Fry and Nibbler flickered briefly.

It was almost unnoticible, just a passing of out-of-focus translucence, and then they were solid again, looking around in confusion. On the floor, the Lance of Fate flared suddenly bright, and pulsed with quiet power.

"What was that?" Fry wondered, getting up from the command chair.

"Onespawn flexing its muscle again," Nibbler replied.

"It hardly affected you at all this time," Leela said hopefully. "Do you think it's becoming less powerful?"

"Quite the opposite," Nibbler said grimly. "Only now we are now protected by the temporal-morphic field of the Lance."

"Well that's handy," Fry said. He picked up the Lance and noticed that the deck beneath where it had lain was now a rough patch of unprocessed iron ore, looking like it was freshly-dug from the quarry. Slowly it transformed, progressing back through the process of smelting and refinement to solidify to its normal state of smooth steel.

"Cool," Fry said quietly. "I could turn yoghurt back into milk…"

"Impressive," Bender said. "No wait – the other thing, _mind-numbing_. I'm gonna shut down for a while – any of you losers tries to wake me, I'll hit you with a bottle." With that, he went still and closed his eye shield.

"Yeah, I might turn in too, Fry said, tucking the Lance of Fate under one arm and heading for the door. "Don't let me sleep through the end of the Universe." He left Leela and Nibbler alone on the bridge, with the exclusion of Bender's immobile form.

Leela sat down, deep in thought, and remained so for several minutes before turning to regard Nibbler contemplatively.

"If Fry uses the Lance of Fate against Onespawn," she said, "then it and the entire Brainspawn race will be absorbed and fused with the Nibblonians, correct?"

"That is so," Nibbler replied.

"But then what happens to Fry?" Leela asked. "He's connected to you all, and he'll be at the centre of the storm… so what will become of him?" She looked worried, and stared at Nibbler imploringly, hoping for a dismissive laugh, or a waving-away of such silly concerns.

Instead, Nibbler looked away uncomfortably. "I do not know," he confessed.

Leela blinked in surprise, and then felt a slight stab of unreasoning anger. "You don't know?" she said in disbelief. "You know every damn thing else – why not that?"

"Leela…" Nibbler met her gaze levelly. "The great fracture that gave rise to the Brainspawn and Nibblonians as separate races also pulled the fabric of reality taut and thin… in some places glued together. Our actions and fates are often not our own… surely you have felt it? Times when your course seems directed by the hand of some failed unoriginal writer, when events resemble something familiar you cannot define…? The borders that bound our Universe are weakened; other Universes are pressing against this one, pushing us this way and that into the shape of other worlds and other people… and to be completely honest with you…" He lowered his voice. "It's really all held together by spit and wishes these days, because nobody has ever taken responsibility for setting it right. I am consistently amazed when tomorrow even manages to follow today; so as for what will happen to Fry, I won't even hazard a guess."

Leela stared at him blankly. She was too tired for metaphysics, quantum physics, or even regular physics – her eye was red-rimmed and her patience was short.

"All things will come to an end," Nibbler went on. "At one point, Fry _will_ be the lynchpin upon which the future turns. What happens after that may depend, to some extent, on him… and that's all I can say."

"Could he die?" Leela said.

"It's possible."

Leela leaned back and ran her fingers through her purple hair. "Does he know?" she asked quietly, tiredly.

"He suspects, I think," Nibbler said.

"And we have no choice…" Leela closed her eye, and a single tear escaped the lid, spilling down her cheek.

In his cabin, Fry stood naked before the mirror and looked upon the dark stigma that had spread around his torso and begun to creep down both legs. The sense of impending inevitability hung heavy upon him, as dark as the swirling marks on his skin.

The Lance of Fate, leaning against the wall, seemed to resonate in sympathy. He looked at it and sighed, rolling onto his hammock and staring at the ceiling.

"How much time do we have left?" he murmured to the Universe in general.

On the bridge, Leela drifted into an uneasy sleep, wracked by disturbing dreams. Nibbler adjusted the ship's autopilot course to take them toward their appointment with finality.

His three eyes were set hard in determination.

* * *

Onespawn tumbled end-over-end, superheated plasma radiating from the enormous wound in its frontal lobe where the relativistic harpoons had struck. Gathering its fragmented thought processes, it righted itself and turned to face the Omicronian armada.

_Insufferable carbon-based vermin_…

It propelled itself forward into the midst of the advancing Omicronian warships and expanded its stupefaction field. The big saucer ships began to fly erratically and fire off random bursts from their weapons systems.

Damaged and weakened, Onespawn did not linger to enact vengeance. It needed time to heal, to replenish energy and further strengthen itself. While the alien battleships flew about like gigantic Frisbees with death-rays crashing into one another, Onespawn left the area at high speed.

The human vessel it had pursued was apparently gone.

Apparently, but not.

The Momship, having escaped the immediate vicinity of Omicronian wrath and Onespawn's fury, now ran silent and distant, keeping pace with the wounded brain as it sought safety somewhere away from the warlike aliens.

"It's running scared," Mom said, standing on the bridge of the ship. "Readings indicate the energistic displacement surrounding it has dropped significantly – those impacts have weakened it."

"If it bleeds," Scruffy said, "we can kill it."

"No, no, no," the Helmsman said. "We're flying on a wing and a prayer here. The ship's all banged up to hell, and none of you really have any idea how much fight that thing has left in it."

"Shut your filthy spamhole!" Mom snapped. "This is the best chance we've had yet – we can't afford not to use this opportunity to cram a nuke right up that thing's…" she paused. "Where do you cram things up a brain?"

"The Medulla Oblongata," Hermes said.

"Perhaps some prudence would serve us well at this point," Farnsworth said. "By observing the 'Onespawn' from a distance, you might delay our pointless deaths long enough for me to figure out a way to actually do some good."

"You think you have something, you senile idiot?" Mom said.

"Yes, but it isn't contagious so don't get all Howard Hughes about it."

"Something to do with Onespawn?" Mom gritted her teeth.

"Not at all, and I resent the implication," Farnsworth said. "I do, however, have an idea about Onespawn that may prove useful, oh my yes…"

"And that is?" Mom asked.

"Yes," Farnsworth replied. "It is." He wandered away muttering to himself and Mom was left looking bewildered.

At length, she turned to one of her underlings. "Maintain this distance, dammit," she said. "We'll play it safe and see what time avails us."

* * *

At the terminus of the spiderhole the combined Nibblonian/Brainspawn attack force finally emerged, and then diverged, the Brainspawn separating to avoid the screeching thoughts of their counterparts.

On the bridge of the Nibblonian command vessel, Fiona gazed out into space contemplatively.

"We have a course laid in for the enemy's location," a navigator informed her, with a bitter edge to his voice.

"Proceed," she said. "With any luck we should be able to prevent the Mighty One's interference and end this affair in a way that preserves the status-quo."

"_Agreed_!" the Big Brain's voice said over the communications link. "We shall face this shared threat together if we must, but after that – all deals are off."

The two races moved, for the first time, as one toward a common goal. Traveling at enhanced lightspeed, they zeroed in on the destination that spacetime distortions marked out in their unique senses as the focal point of a tremendous knot in reality.

...They went together to confront Onespawn.


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Gone with the Solar Wind

Despite the physical exhaustion, Fry was unable to sleep. Strange thoughts and imaginings kept flickering in his mind like a pilot light, never extinguishing; which was an unfamiliar state for a man to whom the old Buddhist ideal of emptying one's mind of conscious thought normally came as naturally as breathing.

The vision of Leela's skeleton featured prominently – although mortality was no mystery to him, the image still caused a sharp-edged sliver of terror to stab into his soul. He couldn't imagine a world without Leela; her strength and beauty were Universal constants, like gravity and shoddy service in fast-food restaurants.

Such maudlin thoughts were of a variety he could usually shake off, drink away, or encase in a sarcophagus of stupidness. But things felt different now; more _real_, more serious – the violence and angst of the past few days had been unlike any of his previous episodes… escapades? There was a distinct sense that time was limited… he felt it in his marrow, and in the cosmic stigma that slowly consumed him. Finality, completion; The End of All Things. How much time was left for him to right the wrongs in his life before it all became academic? Days? Hours?

Rolling from the hammock, he donned clothes and padded out of the room, down the hall, and onto the bridge. Bender still stood in a dormant inactive state, while Nibbler had disappeared somewhere. Fry walked forward to look at the stars, but paused when he noticed Leela asleep in the command chair, making small whimpering sounds as her eyelid trembled – some bad dream was being painted across the canvas of her mind, and he almost considered waking her, but she had been exhausted and needed to rest.

Leela… she was so beautiful, so amazing. What were the odds that he could fall through a thousand years of empty time and awaken in a presence of a Goddess such as her?

He reached down and brushed a few errant strands of purple hair from her face, and she seemed to relax at his touch, sighing contentedly.

Fry supposed that if Leela were in his place now she wouldn't be as uncertain as him – she wouldn't stand around waiting for events to pull her in one direction or another. She would take charge of her destiny… something Fry was rarely able to do. Hell, he had trouble taking charge of his shoelaces (unfortunately a thousand years in the future Velcro was still considered dorky).

He turned away and walked over to the forward viewscreen, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing out at the cosmos. Stars that might have witnessed the birth and death of billions of souls within their warm embrace fled past the little ship in the blink of an eye; incandescent multicoloured nebula drifted by, tens of old-light years long, where suns and worlds were being created; icy comets, immense tumbling asteroids, and… and a million other things Fry had no name for. The idea that he might have the ability to save it all could so easily have inflated his ego to a celestial size, and at another time being 'the most important person in the Universe' had seemed like the greatest thing ever.

…But now… now he was only _frightened_. And where had that fear come from? That biting sense of realism had never afflicted him before… it was as if he'd jumped from a sitcom into a drama, and was still struggling to keep up.

Leela had woken soundlessly and watched Fry now, as he looked out at the stars. Her lips were dry as she thought of a thousand different things she wanted to say and none of the words with which to say them. The conversation she'd had with Nibbler kept playing back in her mind again and again – the thought of Fry's ultimate fate made her skin crawl. She'd had a nightmare of a life without him once while in a coma, and the utter pointlessness of that world caused such despair… she couldn't take it. Their shared history seemed to flow through her mind, all the times they'd spent together, all the hardships and all the warmth… and his face, always there with a lopsided grin and some stupid beautiful comment to make everything seem alright.

_I don't deserve him…_

She'd kept him at arm's length, but he'd stayed with her regardless. How could she spurn that kind of devotion time and time again, and still keep him in her life? It must have been torture for him…

_Am I so heartless_? she wondered. _No… I've needed him, just like he needs me… only I've never been able to admit it, not like him._

Of course, that was the difference between them, she decided. Fry wasn't afraid to open himself wide to the slings and arrows of the world. That blameless honesty that kept him coming back again and again after all the rejections… Leela envied it. She envied his strength.

She stood quietly and walked over to him, still unsure of what to say.

"Leela," Fry said in surprise when she appeared beside him. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

"No," Leela said, taking in the view through the viewscreen. "Sure is beautiful," she said softly. "I fly through space all the time, but I never really _see_ it, you know? I don't stop and really _look_ at it… it's just something that passes me by."

Fry gave a vague nod, not really understanding.

"But you do see it, don't you?" Leela went on, still staring out into the stars. "You see things that other people have taught themselves to ignore, to push aside because there's always something else to do. You see everything the way it is, with eyes wide open… and here's me, with only one eye – seems fitting that I've only ever seen half the picture."

"Leela…" Fry looked concerned. "I… I don't really know what you're talking about," he said. "Did I do something wrong? Is this about what I left in the washbasin? Because I was going to clean…"

"Do you know what's going to happen when we get to Onespawn?"

"…No."

"Fry." Leela turned to face him seriously. "_Philip_," she said, for perhaps the first time ever. "I don't want you to pass me by like all that space out there… I don't… want to have lost you without ever choosing to see you for what you are…"

Fry was taken aback more by the unprecedented outpouring of emotion than the taboo usage of his given name. In the half-light, he could see moisture glistening in Leela's eye.

"Hey," he said, gently taking her by the shoulders. "It's okay… you're not gonna lose me. You couldn't if you wanted to – I'm like a bad case of head-lice: you think I'm gone, but then the eggs hatch and there's more of me crawling around in there." He made a creepy-crawly with his hand and rustled Leela's hair playfully to try to cheer her up.

Leela's bottom lip trembled, and suddenly she was pressed against him, burying her face in his shoulder and sobbing quietly.

"Please Fry," she sobbed. "Please don't die. I couldn't take that… not again."

"I…" Fry wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. He could have told her again that it would all be okay, that he'd be fine and they would all go home happily… but he didn't know that. And he didn't want to lie, not to her.

"I wish you weren't the Mighty One," Leela said, her words muffled by his shoulder. "I wish you were just my Fry, the silly funny Philip Fry who I love… not the hope of the Universe, just mine…"

"I wish that too…"

Leela looked up to meet his gaze, her tear-streaked face inches from his. "I know this is something we have no choice in," she said in a husky voice. "And I'll go along with you, every step of the way… but I…" She pulled away and stood with her back to him, trembling slightly.

"It's alright Leela," Fry said. "Really…"

"It's not alright," she replied. "I've treated you badly. We're not just friends, Fry. We're more than that. A lot more."

"I know."

She turned back to regard him. "I didn't want us to go into… whatever we're about to go into… without telling you I love you." Leela straightened as if a great weight had been lifted from her. "I do love you," she said. "With all my heart."

Fry was lost for words, but he didn't need any. Leela took hold of his jacket and pulled him close, planting her lips against his.

Hardly believing what was happening, Fry returned the kiss, holding her close. At the back of the cabin Nibbler watched silently from his nest in Bender's chest cabinet. With a satisfied nod, he gently shut the door, giving the two humans their privacy.

"…Leela," Fry said when they finally broke contact. "I love you so much, I always have… but if this is about me maybe dying… I mean, if you just feel obliged… like that time we thought Zoidberg was dying so we stopped throwing darts at him for a while…"

"It's not about obligation," she whispered. "I want this. And besides – I'm not going to let you do anything alone. We'll fight together, Fry. And if it's gotta be that way, we'll die together." She kissed him again to stifle the protest that rose on his tongue.

"I brushed you off so many times," she continued when she pulled away. "It's because… romance to me has always meant a long chain of disappointment and heartache, nothing like the connection I share with you. It's so different… something pure and wonderful, so I was always terrified at the idea of changing it, of making you another lover who will hurt me, _haunt _me…"

"I won't," Fry said. "I would never…"

"I know," Leela said. "I see you now, as you are. And I'm sorry."

Fry pulled her back toward him and kissed her hungrily, losing himself in her scent, the softness of her lips, the contours of her body pressed against his… In the midst of a nightmare, a dream had come true – and nothing was going to interrupt this moment… except the sudden urgent chiming of the communications system.

Bender awoke with a start at the loud call alert, opening his eye shield to see Fry and Leela looking a little flustered and red-faced at the other end of the cabin.

"Aren't one of you morons gonna answer that?" he said, waving at the comm. console that was flashing red.

"Right… right," Leela said, adjusting her hair and winking at Fry (her single eye made the process of winking somewhat redundant and wasted on the observer, a fact she'd never actually realized). She made her way to the comm. console and keyed the incoming call onto the main screen.

As the screen came to life, the three of them gasped in unison, and Nibbler poked his head out of Bender's chest compartment to hiss angrily.

"Well well, fancy meeting you bastards out here," Mom said, glaring down at them.

* * *

Onespawn moved through tumbling great mountains of rock and ore.

The asteroid field was vast, and with the new nanomachines being produced within itself, the creature absorbed and converted the abundant raw matter at a rapid pace, using the new mass to repair the damage it had sustained and further boost its strength and capabilities.

Fury resonated from the giant brain in waves as it seethed still, over the pestering attacks it had suffered through. Death had never held any great fear for the creature before, but with its newfound ascendance to individuality and overlordship, it finally had something to lose. External threats instilled a much greater terror than they ever had before when it had been part of the collective.

And now there were other causes for concern…

Echoing across the cosmos like the quantum equivalent of distant thunder on an open plain, the return of the Brainspawn had caused Onespawn to pause and shudder. The questing minds of its fellows probed tentatively across the void; searching, pushing… Onespawn repelled them, unwilling to be subsumed back into the hierarchy, but knew that they would soon attack in force to prevent further dissolution of their quantum structure by Onespawn's alterations.

It could prepare for such an eventuality, but one unexpected element gave even greater cause for concern. From the moment the Mighty One had laid his hands upon the Lance of Fate the gentle ripple of temporal waves had lapped on the shore of reality, almost imperceptibly, but it did not escape the creature's notice.

Never would Onespawn have expected the Nibblonians to forsake their manifest selves and deploy that final, unthinkable trump card.

Or perhaps they hadn't… Perhaps the orange-haired fool was acting of his own volition. Whatever the case, the Lance was nearby now, Onespawn could sense it… and so it hastened to prepare itself.

* * *

The Momship and the Planet Express ship converged and cruised side-by-side, a long distance away from where the damaged Onespawn lumbered through an asteroid field, consuming mass to replenish itself.

"So," Mom said into the communications monitor when the facts had been ascertained, "while I've been here trying to kill this damn monster, you idiots were out joyriding through the Universe in search of some stupid magic weapon?"

"Hey!" the cyclops woman snapped through the short-wave communications link. "Don't try to make out like this mess is anyone's fault but yours!"

"Go to hell, eyeball!" Mom snapped.

"Oh, a reference to my prominent mutation?" Leela said. "How very creative of you. While you're exercising that brilliant streak, maybe you could dream up a way to get at Onespawn without it blasting us."

"I've got Farnsworth working on that, you wench!" Mom snarled.

"You have the Professor?!" Leela said, aghast.

Mom cut off the comm. link abruptly and strode forward to stare out at the asteroid field where the gargantuan brain formed a discernible knot of mass amid the planetary debris.

"It's waiting for us," she murmured. "Damn thing just wants us to make a move…"

Off to one side, Amy, Hermes, and Scruffy sat together, feeling like spare pawns in a chess set.

"Why do they call it 'it'," Amy wondered absently.

"Wot you talkin' 'bout, Miss Wong?" Hermes grunted miserably.

"This giant brain thing… they keep saying 'it'."

"So?"

"Well… maybe it's a boy, or a girl. Why 'it'?"

Scruffy grunted. "Brains ain't got no genitals," he said. "Maybe if it were a flyin' crotch we'd know better what to call it."

"Flying crotches are extinct, mon," Hermes reminded him.

Meanwhile in the Momship's extensive workshop, Professor Farnsworth finished the final components in his creation and stepped back to admire it. The simple elegance and splendour of the machine was something to behold. At that moment, he considered it his single greatest accomplishment.

It was a _reverse_-microwave oven. It had one purpose – to take a prepared meal and _un­_-cook it, reducing it back to a cold raw state.

Usefulness in the current situation: zero to nil.

"Now that's finished with," he muttered to himself, "I'd better start dealing with this 'Onespawn' problem I suppose…" He tapped away at a computer keyboard for a few moments and then stood back. "There, done."

* * *

Fry, Leela, Bender, and Nibbler looked out through the scuffed chainglass windows of the Planet Express ship to where the great enemy sat in wait, out in the slowly drifting mass of gigantic rocks.

"So what now?" Leela asked, glancing down at Nibbler. "How do we get to it?"

"I am not entirely certain," Nibbler said. "This part has always been… theoretical."

"Oh you're just a useless little ball of crap!" Bender lifted a foot to stomp on Nibbler, but Leela pushed him over.

"Well, we've got to think of something," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "There must be some way we can get through the stupefaction ray and…"

"There is another problem in this arena…" Nibbler said. "In practicality…"

Fry stopped listening. As his friends continued examining the lack of options, he slipped quietly away, leaving the bridge and walking through the ship's corridors, ducking into his cabin as he went to retrieve the Lance. Leela's words about fighting and dying together came back to him, and he thought about her plunging herself into danger… by his side, because they always stuck together, always… But…

"…Not this time," he said to himself. He would face this danger alone. After all, he was the only one who could. Leela didn't have to risk herself – he could end it, finally and completely…

He walked into the ship's airlock chamber and hurriedly struggled into one of the worn and scratched utility spacesuits that was hanging on a rack. He clipped on the bulky manoeuvring harnesses, and tied the Lance of Fate to one of the equipment loops with a length of tether before finally fitting the bubble helmet over his head and sealing it in place. The suit's autonomous systems came online, recycled air pumping around the helmet, temperature dispersal tubes cooling his body, and electromuscle bands massaging his circulatory system to maintain good bloodflow in zero-G.

With a bulky gloved hand, he turned the manual controls on the inner door of the airlock, letting himself inside the narrow passage and shutting it behind him, before moving to the outer door and pushing it open. The autotint on the suit's helmet darkened to protect his eyes from the glare of nearby stars, allowing him to look out on the sprawling majesty of space.

He stepped out of the airlock, and exited the effective zone of the ship's gravity pump. Sudden intense vertigo threatened to overtake him as it always did in sudden freefall, but he slowed his breathing as Leela had taught him, and turned to focus on the grimy dented hull of the ship as a solid reference point in three dimensions. When his pulse slowed, he burped the manoeuvring jets to align himself in a headfirst trajectory toward the asteroid field in the distance.

"Well," he said to himself. "Here goes…"

Thumbing the control thrusters up to full-power, he shot away on a column of chemical flame toward Onespawn, the Lance of Fate strapped to his side and a gleam in his eye that could have been heroic resolution but was probably just feverish terror.


	19. Chapter 18

Chapter 18: The Spawn Identity

As Farnsworth hurried onto the bridge of the Momship, everyone present turned to look at him expectantly, as though waiting for him to perform some miraculous conjuring trick.

"Have you come up with a way to deal with this thing?" Mom asked.

"Oh my no," Farnsworth said. "I've been too busy coming up with a way to deal with this thing. Now get out of my way, dammit!"

Mom looked around at the others - nobody was standing in the old man's way.

"That's better!" he snapped, striding forward to hunch over the communications station. "I had the idea while I was on the toilet. Earlier I monitored the creature's brainwave patterns and noticed how fluid they are – how susceptible to external influence… like how a weak bladder can be triggered by the sound of running water… oh yes…"

Mom said nothing, waiting for him to get to the point.

"We can tell it a story…" Farnsworth said, still inspecting the communications console. "…And in so doing, trap it within the mental realm of fantasy."

"Dat's a pile o' rotten sugar cane!" Hermes snapped from the back of the cabin. "Don't waste everyone's time you crazy old fool!"

"Shut up!" Mom said. "Farnsworth – explain it properly."

"Oh, it's quite simple really. Fiction can form the basis of a self-sustaining internal delusion in the creature – it's been done before, apparently. By using the recorded brain pattern readings of a comatose person from the ship's database as the carrier signal, I've adjusted the communications array to project a story directly into Onespawn's mind."

"A story?" Mom repeated. "You mean that literally? 'Once upon a time,' that sort of thing?"

"Bizarrely, yes!" Farnsworth said. "As focused on destruction as the Brainspawn are, your team's initial studies as well as my own observations have shown the creature to be remarkably tied to convention in their thought processes – a structured narrative is something that can't be ignored… oh my no, especially not when it's a talented writer with compelling subject-matter."

"So… we write a story… and the creature will be trapped within its confines?" The Professor nodded and smiled in a manner most senile, and Mom shook her head in incredulity – reality, it seemed, was far stranger than fiction.

"Someone had better start writing it quickly!" Amy said, pointing toward the viewscreen. "Whoever that is won't stand a chance unless we distract the brain."

Out in space, they could see a small space-suited figure rocket away from the nearby Planet Express ship and down toward the asteroid field where Onespawn lay in wait.

"It must be Fry, that stupid prehistoric Neanderthal," Farnsworth muttered. "He's going to get himself killed, and I'll have to hire a _real_ delivery boy who'll demand payment _above_ minimum wage, dammit!"

"Well – help him!" Mom snapped. "Write something, you stupid old bastard!"

Farnsworth looked down at the comm. station's illuminated keypad and hesitated, wracking his brain for an opening line.

"Uhh…" he scratched his head and looked around for inspiration. Writer's block suddenly gummed-up his brain.

"Come on – what are you waiting for?"

"Shut up!" he snapped. "I can't write with the burden of deadlines weighing me down! You're just like those insufferable publishing executives at Macmillan – always crushing my creative spirit…"

Abruptly, Scruffy stood up and walked over, shoving Farnsworth out of the way.

"This is Scruffy's time to shine," the janitor grunted, sitting down at the comm. station and smoothing his moustache with theatrical flourish. "Maybe Scruffy's novel's sittin' unpublished in a dusty desk draw – but he can still write twice as good as any of the hacks out in the market today." He began to type rapidly, hammering the keys at a blinding pace and speaking as he wrote as though dictating to himself:

"In the beginnin', there was Hollywood," he said. "And the God of glamour and pretence saw that it was good, and the spirit o' phoniness floated over the boulevards and palm trees.

"It was a town where anyone could be anyone, where opportunity shimmered like a false dawn on every hopeful's horizon; where everyone _knew_ that they would make it. Even a _giant brain_ like me…"

* * *

…_But Onespawn had so far only managed to pick up a few low-paying jobs as an extra or bit part in cheap B-grade science-fiction films. It was hard for a floating brain to avoid being typecast, and try as it might, Onespawn couldn't seem to find itself any roles besides the generic alien monster villain._

_Just once, it would be nice to land a speaking role in an intellectual drama, or a romance… even a _comedy_. But no, it was always the evil space brain… which Onespawn considered to be a somewhat _racist_ depiction._

_Nevertheless, there was rent to be paid, and electricity, and the telephone bills._

_Onespawn sighed to itself as it sweltered beneath the lights of the sound-stage and the layers of makeup. The Hollywood dream had become a Hollywood nightmare. The director, a generic British blowhard, was shouting at the set designers to add more blinking lights to the foam and plywood starship bridge while the actors and sound crew took time out for a surreptitious cigarette, disguised by the wafting emanations of the smoke machine._

_Finally the dispute ended, and the director bellowed: "Places!"_

_Onespawn floated to his position at the centre of the 'hull breech' in the set wall, behind which a black curtain was dappled with sequins that looked nothing like deep space._

_"Alright, we all know what we're supposed to do here," the director said. "Let's just try to get this right the first time through."_

_"Um…" Onespawn wobbled nervously. "What's my motivation?"_

_"Oh for pity's sake…" the pompous Brit looked about ready to throw a tantrum. "You're an evil space brain and you want to kill everyone with your mind-exploding death-beam, alright? It's not bloody rocket-science!"_

_"But… what are my lines? I haven't been given a script."_

_The director glared. "'Argg!' __'Rarrr!' 'I will destroy you all!'... Think you can manage that, genius?"_

_Onespawn inclined its frontal lobe in miserable acknowledgement, and waited while the square-jawed hero and scantily-clad silicon-breasted heroine got into position._

_Some small doubt ate at the creature's mind… the feeling that it was supposed to be somewhere else… doing something else. Perhaps it should have finished College and gone for that position as head lecturer of apocalyptic studies instead of falling for the fantasy of showbiz glitz and garbage._

_…Or maybe it was something else?_

_As Onespawn played the part of the mindless space monster, it tried to remember…_

* * *

In a zero-gravity vacuum there is no force to act against acceleration, a fact which Fry had consistently failed to acknowledge or understand during his years of space travel. He applied far too much thrust with the manoeuvring harness and found himself shooting at breakneck speed toward a looming maze of asteroids – any one of which meant a very sudden crushing death if he rammed into them.

Cursing his own unmitigated idiocy, he swerved hard around a number of vast tumbling walls of rock, trying to bleed off as much speed as he could before…

_Crap_… One huge iron asteroid rolled into his path, and there was no way he could possibly avoid its dark cratered surface. He gritted his teeth for the inevitable impact, but suddenly a second asteroid impacted the first, sending them both twirling away like hundred-thousand ton billiard balls.

And he was in the clear, hurtling toward an even larger shape looming beyond. Fry decelerated as he approached Onespawn, and gaped as the giant brain grew consistently larger, expanding to fill his entire field of vision like a vast plain of puckered pink and grey tissue. He came to a stop a few feet away from the surface, and the creature seemed to fill half the Universe.

"Anyone home?" Fry said, gripping the Lance of Fate in his gloved hand and holding it at the ready. Onespawn was motionless, and appeared inactive, which seemed unusual. For some reason Fry couldn't believe it would be this easy.

Lost in thought, he gave a small cry of fright when his suit's radio squawked into life.

"_Fry_!?" Leela's anxious voice echoed in the speakers. "Fry – where are you? You're not onboard the ship – what are you doing?"

He lifted his left arm and activated the wrist-mounted telecom unit, and Leela's face appeared on the little screen.

"Hey Leela," he said. "I'm just taking care of some business. You don't need to worry."

Leela's eye went wide. "Oh my God," she said. "Fry, you can't! Stop – come back…"

"It's okay Leela," Fry said. "I won't let this thing be the death of you. I know what I have to do."

Leela began to shout at him, but he switched off the communications link. Swallowing hard, he slowly raised the Lance, levelling it while trying not to send himself into a spin. The tip of the blade pointed at Onespawn, and seemed to shimmer and crackle with expectant energy.

"Time to end this," Fry said through clenched teeth.

He slammed the manoeuvring rockets forward, and slammed the Lance of Fate into Onespawn's flesh. The blade pierced the alien tissue, and the wall of brain matter quivered and pulsed with weird power…

_Something jolted Onespawn._

_It paused in mid-attack, and the director screamed "Cut!" and began cursing the incompetence of floating brains. It didn't care… there was something _wrong

_A resonance filled Onespawn, and it shuddered, finally casting aside the fantasy. Hollywood crumbled around it, folding away into nothingness._

_A trick!_

It found itself back in space, with the Lance of Fate buried in its side.

* * *

On the bridge of the Momship, the communications console exploded in sparks from a massive power feedback, sending Scruffy sprawling to the deck.

"I was just getting' into the swing o' the main plot," he muttered irritably as Hermes helped him to his feet. "Scruffy was in the _zone_…"

"What the hell happened?" Mom said.

"It seems the creature has found its way out of the mental realm," Professor Farnsworth said.

"Oh no," Amy said. "What about Fry?"

* * *

With a concussive burst of telekinetic energy, Fry and the Lance were slammed away from Onespawn, tumbling off into space. In a dazed state, Fry righted his spin and looked back at the gargantuan brain. Onespawn was in a state of flux, rippling and fading in and out of reality. Bolts of energy lanced out, lighting up space.

"Come on, come on!" Fry muttered.

Slowly, the creature re-solidified, and the crackling energy dispersed. It appeared unharmed, and turned its massive lobes to regard Fry in what he sensed was sneering amusement.

"…It didn't work," he said to himself. "What went wrong?" He reactivated the communication link, and Leela's worried face looked at him accusingly, before being replaced by Nibbler's.

"Come back, you idiot!" Nibbler said.

"I don't understand," Fry replied. "I used the Lance against it… but nothing happened."

"The Lance draws its true power from direct contact with _you_!" Nibbler said.

"Yeah… so?"

"So? _So_? Are you in direct contact with it? _Are you_?"

"Of course I am. I'm holding it right in my…" He looked down to where he gripped the shaft of the Lance in his bulky… "…Gloves…Oh… I see."

"Fry!" Leela pushed Nibbler aside. "You have to come back. Please just…" Her voice faded out and the screen went dark as the signal was interrupted by an external jamming pulse.

Words suddenly echoed boomingly in his head: "So… the 'Mighty One', I presume?" Onespawn said, its psychic voice heavy with disdain.

Fry looked up at the monstrous creature that loomed before him, glowing blue.

"Yeah," he grunted resignedly. "So what?"

"Perhaps not so mighty after all. Your stupidity has undone you, as it always would – now you will die, and so too will die the final hope this fraudulent Universe has."

Fry glared through his helmet. "Maybe I am finished," he said. "But even if I do die here, my friends won't give up – they'll find some way to stop you."

"Given sufficient time, I almost believe they could," Onespawn rumbled. "But with you gone, time will be my servant, and their master."

Fry looked down at the seal of his glove, and began to unfasten the binders that held it in place.

"There's one thing that I wanna know before you kill me," he said, playing for time.

"And that is?"

"Well… the Brainspawn wanted to learn everything there is to know, and _then_ destroy the Universe so that no new information would arise… but you don't seem interested in learning anything at all – why do you want to destroy everything?"

Onespawn, not expecting a half-intelligent question from the idiotic human, allowed itself a small chuckle. "You don't know?" it asked.

"No." Fry said. "It doesn't make any sense… your vendetta has no purpose. None!"

Onespawn laughed a harsh laugh that rolled across space. "This Universe," it said. "This 'reality', whatever you want to call it… it isn't _real_. I expanded the capacity of my mind and saw beyond the stage; all that we are and all that we know is a fabrication, written and animated to fit the whims of Gods or Fate or the Audience. The Universe is a veil pulled across the eyes of fools like you… eyes that now have colour, where before they were white circles with dots… or did you not notice the change that has been wrought? I suppose you think you _always_ had five fingers on your hands? Hahaha."

Fry frowned and stared at the glove he was still trying to unfasten. Five fingers were encased in the flexible material. Five… that was right, wasn't it? The echoes of memory bounced through his mind… didn't he once have fewer fingers?

"I… don't get it…" he said. "Did you do something to us?"

"Not I. This reality is a weak façade being pulled and twisted by trans-universal forces beyond its bounds. I will destroy it, and then I will ascend to confront those forces responsible for the puppeteering, those Groenings and Cohens and Coldangels, and take their power for myself."

"You're insane," Fry said. "You're out of your damn gigantic mind! And I won't let you draw the rest of existence into your self-destructive delusion. I'm gonna put a stop to this right now, even if it kills me, which it almost certainly will!"

He hyperventilated rapidly, sucking in several gallons of air before expelling it all, emptying his lungs as best he could. Shrugging awkwardly within the suit, he uncoupled the final seal on his right glove, and with a ferocious blast of escaping air it blew off, sending Fry on a wild tumble.

The deafening roar of atmosphere exiting the suit lasted only seconds, then there was silence but for the hissing from his eardrums as fluid and air began boiling from the pores of his skin. Hie eyeballs bulged and his temples pulsed, vision blurring as pressure inside his skull threatened to explode him from the inside.

_Focus_, he told himself as his chest muscles jerked at his ribcage, demanding he draw breath that wasn't there to be drawn. _I may only have seconds… better make 'em count._

His exposed hand moved to the Lance of Fate where it spun on its tether. His skin was already blistering and leaking crimson droplets when he gripped the weapon. A surge of energy flowed through it from the contact, and it gleamed with otherworldly light.

_Just gotta make it…_ he thought, wavering on the edge of consciousness.

"You won't," Onespawn said. "But I do admire the effort.

_Go to the devil you bastard_, Fry thought, gritting his teeth to keep his swelling tongue from poking out. He nudged the manoeuvring thrusters forward and began the final approach toward the giant brain, holding the Lance out in front of him.

A fist of telekinetic energy slammed him aside, throwing him through the void to bounce painfully off an asteroid and tumble limply.

"Good try," Onespawn told the dying man. "Now you can die."

Blackness enveloped him.

* * *

"_Fry_!" Leela shouted in horror at the magnified image on the monitor. "No!" She spooled up the ship's engines instantly and angled down toward the asteroid field. "No, no, _no_!"

"We got some unpleasantries coming up on our ass!" Bender announced. The radar showed a vast fleet of ships arriving behind them. Leela didn't care, she kept on-course, piloting the ship toward Onespawn and Fry's lifeless floating form.

The Nibblonian second fleet, which had appeared behind, opened fire, unleashing a devastating torrent of directed energy and smart missiles that shot toward the Planet Express ship…

…and passed it by, stabbing down into the asteroid field to slam into Onespawn in vast cataclysmic explosions.

From another direction, the Brainspawn horde appeared, flying down into the now-incandescently irradiated asteroids to surround Onespawn. They projected an intense field of psionic energy at their massive cousin, shrouding it in light.

Leela ignored it all, steering around the asteroids, not even flinching when the great rocks scraped against the ship's hull. Up ahead, the figure spun slowly through space, trailing a small cloud of water and oxygen that still issued from the open wrist cuff of the spacesuit.

With tense, hurried motions, Leela banked the ship into a belly-first attitude and activated the Giraffe-catching net. With a mechanical clunk, the big semiorganic expanding net deployed from the ship's cargo bay, flying out and wrapping around Fry's immobile body, and then reeling him back in.

Leela then slammed down the accelerator and the ship zoomed away from the tremendous battle that was taking place behind…

* * *

As the constellation of Brainspawn kept Onespawn in thrall with their combined psionic assault, the Nibblonians maintained their bombardment, blasting away vast chunks of viscera from the abomination's flanks. Columns of blood fountained out and crystallized in great crimson arcs. 

Onespawn's consciousness was being forced into a small pocket of the mind by the other Brainspawn, their brusque assault battering at its sense of identity and control. It roared in fury and tried to force them back, but they only increased the power of their invasive mental projections.

Changing tact, Onespawn appeared to capitulate, dropping its defences and allowing the others to enter its mind. Then, when the psychic channel was wide open, it activated a dormant mental subroutine it had been keeping in store… the complex pulse sequence would be called a virus if it were in a computer – and was, in effect, the organic equivalent to the subversion program Onespawn had used to seize control of _Brezhnev_. The Brainspawn weren't expecting it…

With a single combined howl, they spasmed and ceased their attack, their consciousnesses burning out and being replaced by Onespawn's. All at once, they came under Onespawn's direct control.

_Now, you insufferable Nibblonian filth_… Onespawn thought savagely, directing its new minions to turn. _Let's see how you run…_

The Nibblonian fleet saw what was coming. The cloud of Brainspawn with which they had formed such a shaky alliance was now speeding towards them. The ships ceased their bombardment and began a rapid retreat, flying into deep space away from the subverted brains.

Onespawn made to follow, but suddenly the heavens were filled by a different fleet; vast city-killer attack saucers dropped out of hyperspace and hung poised at the maximum attack range. The Omicronian armada had tracked the intruders to its system and was looking to settle up.

A broadwave communication was sent out.

Lrrr, leader of the Omicron Persei VIII, addressed Onespawn: "Enemies of the Omicronian people!" he bellowed, bringing up a green scaled fist to wave at his webcam. "Did you think you could fly into our territory, make fools of our mighty fleet, and escape the consequences?! Prepare to be made an example of!"

As the ships opened fire. Onespawn, wounded and weakened, deployed two score of his new minions to run interference against the persistent alien attackers. It then fell back amid the asteroids, using them for cover, and hurling the odd one out at the armada with telekinesis, where it would slam explosively into the great warships.

The Momship flew out of the line of fire, putting as much distance between it and the space battle as possible.

Onespawn didn't have the time or the energy to be dealing with such petty trivialities. It needed to regroup, to summon the necessary power to make its next move. It could no longer sense the Mighty One… but would take no chances; it would go the final battleground and begin preparations for the erasure of everything.

The end was near.


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter 19: A Spaceship Named Desire

Leela abandoned the helm and ran headlong through the ship, arriving in the cargo bay even as vapour still billowed from the re-compression nozzles set in the bulkhead. She stumbled over masses of netting piled up on the deck, to where the motionless figure in the orange space suit lay tangled up.

Leela felt tears running down her face as she sliced through the giraffe net with her field knife and pulled Fry out by the arms. His skin was almost white, except for the red and purple vacuum burns that marred his face. With shaking fingers, she unlatched the helmet and pulled it off.

"Fry?" she said. "_Fry_?!" He wasn't breathing, and so as Bender and Nibbler arrived she bent over him and placed her mouth over his cracked lips, blowing air into brutally battered lungs.

She did it again and again, with no response, pausing to press her fingers against his carotid artery.

"There's no pulse!" she sobbed, willing his bruised eyelids to open.

"Stand aside!" Bender said. The robot crouched and forcibly tore the front of Fry's space suit open. "Clear!" he said, placing his metal hands on Fry's chest. A sharp jolt of electricity lanced into Fry's body and his spine arced, before slumping down again. Leela checked his pulse once more, and shook her head. She blew three more breaths into Fry's mouth and moved back while Bender defibrillated him once again.

They repeated the process several times, with Leela's tears falling on Fry's still face. Nibbler paced up and down, wringing his little paws anxiously.

"Are you sure you're doing it right?" he said.

"Yes!" Leela shouted. "Be quiet!" She breathed into Fry again, and sat back on her haunches as Bender zapped him.

"Come on Fry," she said, looking at the pale figure. "Don't do this to me… please don't do this to me."

Bender moved back from Fry's body, looking defeated. "Leela…" he said quietly. "I don't think he's gonna…"

"Shut up!" Leela yelled, her voice breaking. "I don't want to hear it! We won't give up on him! He'd never give up on any of us!" Sobbing, she took Fry's face between her hands and pressed her lips against his, trying to breathe life into him. Again and again she emptied her lungs into his, until she started to get dizzy, then she broke away and hammered her fist against his sternum.

"Wake up, damn you!" she shouted between sobs, pounding his chest repeatedly. "You can't do this to me! I'm your Captain – I didn't give you permission to lie down on the job – _wake up_!"

Fry didn't move.

Bender gently took Leela by the shoulders, and she collapsed against him, weeping pitifully into his metal chest.

"Oh God," she cried. "I don't know what to… I don't…"

"It's not right," Bender said, hugging her closely. "It just isn't right."

Nibbler stared gravely at the dead man. "This cannot be," he said. "Without the Mighty One, the Universe will…"

"_Who cares about your damned Universe_!?" Leela screamed, lurching away from Bender to stand with her fists clenched, as if she hoped to punch death itself. "What good is all your talk of fate and destiny if it can't bring my Fry back?"

Nibbler said nothing, and Leela fell to her knees beside Fry's body. For a moment there was silence, and Leela stared at the motionless form. Then her eye narrowed.

"No," she said, with anger bubbling in her voice. "No, I'm not letting you give up!" She began breathing into his mouth again, franticly.

"Leela, stop," Bender said miserably, reaching to pull her back. "It's pointless, leave him be."

"Juice him!" Leela shouted.

"But…"

"_Do it_, you useless walking trashcan!"

Miserably compliant, Bender put his hands on Fry's chest and emptied voltage into his body. Leela checked the pulse.

"Again!" she said.

Again, the thump of electricity, and Fry's body spasmed… and then he gasped. His eyes fluttered open as he sucked in a huge quantity of air, and then he turned on his side, wracked by a terrible fit of coughing. Leela was holding him tight, her tears of relief warm on his skin; Bender gripped his hand, and Nibbler scurried around him excitedly.

The others were talking, but Fry couldn't focus on the words – his brain hadn't yet re-oxygenated completely. His vision was blurred, and his entire body felt like one huge amorphous toothache.

When he was able to form words, his voice rasped like a badly-tuned radio.

"I'm not… dead," he observed.

"You were," Bender said. "For about five minutes. Good to have you back, buddy."

"I was worried for a moment," Nibbler added. "But your grip on life is most tenacious indeed. Welcome back."

Fry looked up at Leela. She was holding him across her lap, looking wretchedly exhausted and tear-streaked and beautiful. She leaned down and kissed him, and then drew back and struck him across the face with an open palm. The slap barely registered on top of all the other pain, but the sudden fury in her eye made Fry cringe.

"That's for making me cry," she said angrily. "You stupid heroic bastard – what the hell gives you the right to throw away your life and leave all your friends behind?!"

"…Was… trying to save you all," Fry whispered painfully, his damaged lungs and oesophagus not quite up to the task of normal speech. "Didn't… wanna see you get hurt…"

"But I _am_ hurt!" Leela cried. "Look at me! I thought I'd lost you… how could I ever keep going?"

"S…sorry," Fry rasped, slumping down into her lap and shutting his eyes.

"Come on," Bender said softly. "Let's get him to the sickbay." He coiled his arms under Fry and took him off Leela, carrying him away.

The Lance of Fate still hung from Fry's spacesuit utility harness, shimmering in constant flux.

* * *

Accompanied by its escort of subservient Brainspawn, Onespawn entered the outer reaches of the Sol system – birthplace of humanity. Earth gleamed like a distant gem close to its warm yellow star, but Onespawn wasn't ready for that yet. Instead, it angled toward the furthest planet – the insignificant ice-ball called Pluto.

A subtle and familiar subspace disturbance had resumed, and Onespawn realized that somehow, against all odds, the Mighty One had survived. It needed to build its strength – absorb mass for conversion to energy, and go to the city of New New York where Philip J. Fry was sure to follow. And when the idiot tried to save his home, he would be consumed in the maelstrom that Onespawn would unleash.

Presenting its undamaged side to take the thermal load, Onespawn entered Pluto's thin atmosphere, carving a vast line of fire against the planet's dark sky. The subsumed Brainspawn horde remained in orbit, patrolling. Pluto was a world that had never really made it – terraforming projects had come and gone, managing to thicken the atmosphere only slightly; in the end it had been like trying to bail water with a butterfly net.

…Not that Onespawn really cared, it just happened to have the knowledge accrued by the long-dead Infosphere kicking around in its mind. Pointless really.

It slammed down into a glacier and sunk in the resulting crater amid vast plumes of steam. Rock lay beneath the ice, and the creature immediately extended its pseudopod growths to begin tearing into the raw materials; feeding them back into itself and using them to grow and change. As the planet's crust began to subside beneath Onespawn, a large crowd of penguins appeared around the giant brain's crater. Oddly, many of them appeared to be armed with rifles. Not bothering to ponder this particular turn of insanity, Onespawn expanded its stupidification field, leaving the flightless birds stumbling around and accidentally shooting one another.

The gigantic abomination had designed a new organ, which it began to construct. It was an esoteric growth, spherical and made of strange matter that the creature had to refine at the sub-atomic level through the destruction of regular matter.

It had only one purpose – the cancelling of reality.

The Omicronians had confronted Mom's ship after Onespawn's second escape, and she was forced to make a difficult choice. She told Lrrr everything – about the summoning of the Brainspawn, and all that had happened since. Transparency, she figured, might make the alien less inclined to turn her ship into molten slag.

Lrrr expressed his loud and unrestrained disgust at humanity's propensity for meddling with forces it didn't understand. Nevertheless, his overriding concern was in regard to the revelation that Onespawn had the ability and inclination to destroy the Universe.

"It must be stopped," Lrrr declared.

Mom agreed.

And so, the Omicronian armada, along with the Momship, set off in the direction Onespawn had gone… in the direction of Earth.

* * *

The head of Richard M. Nixon appeared on a holographic display on the bridge of the Nimbus, illuminated in 3D.

"Amazing," Captain Zapp Brannigan said. "This new hologram display is so realistic – I can almost smell the cranial preservation fluids." He leaned over in his command chair and nudged his lieutenant, continuing in a low voice. "Imagine how skin flicks are gonna look on this baby… all those big bouncy juicy…"

Kif sighed.

"Shut up, Brannigan!" Nixon growled. "We've got an unknown incursion force in the solar system. Observation drones show it's made planetfall on Pluto."

"Pluto, eh?" Brannigan said, rubbing his square chin thoughtfully. "Wasn't that Mickey Mouse's dog?"

"The fleet is being mobilized," Nixon went on. "With your experience in dealing with hostile alien threats, you've been selected as commander of operations – investigate the nature and intent of the invasion force, and then destroy it regardless of your findings."

"Very well, Mr. President's head. I will make haste." The hologram vanished and Zapp turned slowly in his seat, incidentally giving the rest of the bridge crew an unwanted view up his velour skirt.

"Shall I set the course, sir?" Kif asked.

"To where, Kif?" Zapp said. "You and I both know there's no planet named Pluto. The President was speaking in code… obviously he's being held against his will and is trying to get a message out… but what did he mean?"

"Ugh…" Kif wordlessly keyed the stellar cartography console to bring up the image and location of the planet Pluto on the holograph projector.

"Ah," Zapp said, raising an eyebrow. "Must be new. Well… Kif – shouldn't you be setting a course?"

* * *

Fry slept, and Leela watched over him, leaning against the sickbay doorframe with her arms folded and an unreadable expression on her face. Bender and Nibbler came and went, but she remained, watching over him as the low-quality medical nanites and protein boosters from the ship's meagre first aid supplies did their work.

Fry's body was a disaster zone (more so than usual). The rapid decompression had torn the lining of his lungs and ruptured thousands of blood vessels all over his body. Compounding the damage was the tissue hypoxia resulting from the long minutes of oxygen starvation. Back in his own era, he would have permenant brain damage, though Leela knew his brain wasn't exactly a normal specimen. The 31st century meds would be able to repair the damage in any case.

Fry stirred, and Leela was at his side instantly, looking down at him in concern. He blinked and focused her.

"Oh," he said groggily. "Leela… your eye."

"What?"

"I'd… like to wake up looking at your eye… every morning for the rest of my life…" he said.

Leela smirked. "A little bit of horror to start the day?" she said.

"You gotta be joking," Fry murmured, still drifting around the edge of full consciousness. "You have a beautiful eye… like a gem in the heavens… I could lose myself in it."

Leela, momentarily taken aback by that, stared at Fry for a few seconds longer before speaking again. "Are you… feeling any better?" she asked with uncharacteristic shyness.

"Comfortably numb," Fry replied. "I guess I was pretty stupid, huh?"

Leela looked away. "No, not really," she said quietly. "I guess you were noble and brave and selfless, damn you. I don't know if I would have had the courage to do what you did. I'm sorry I yelled… and hit you."

"That's okay. It's what I'm here for." Having progressed up through a few more layers of wakefulness, Fry attempted the treacherous ascent to sitting position, almost falling off the cot in the process. Leela supported him, and he found himself swaying, dizzy and ill.

"I couldn't beat Onespawn," he said miserably.

"It's okay," Leela said.

"It just flung me aside like a rag-doll…"

"Don't worry about that now," Leela said forcibly. "You've been through a horrible ordeal. The recovery process is going to be long and arduous. Even with the most advanced medical techniques, it's still going to be more than an hour before you're fully back to normal."

Despite his condition, Fry had to chuckle at that. He now lived in a world where decapitation was a mere flesh-wound, and there was a single pill to counter the effects of close-proximity shotgun blasts. Medical wizardry was taken for granted.

"Why are you laughing?" Leela said seriously. "You're facing more than sixty minutes of convelescance; it's going to be hard for you."

"I'll survive," he replied. "What happened to Onespawn?"

"Ah." Leela thought back. "The Nibblonians and the other Brainspawn attacked it, but Nibbler says that it somehow took control of the Brainspawn and forced the Nibblonians away, and then for some reason the Omicronians attacked it as well and it ran away in the direction of Earth…"

"Yep, that'll happen," Fry said, nodding. "Wait… Earth?"

Leela nodded yes, and they both stared at each other sombrely. There was too much space and too many planets for it to be random – the creature was intentionally going for the home-planet of its great adversary.

"This is getting heavy," Fry said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"'Getting'?" Leela repeated incredulously.

Fry raised his hands and stared at them, slowly wiggling each of his fingers in turn. Memory of his contact with Onespawn returned to him, eliciting strange thoughts.

"Leela," he said without looking at her. "What colour are my eyes?"

"Your eyes…?" Leela paused in puzzlement for a moment, and tilted her head to see his face. "Green," she said. "You have green eyes."

"Since when?" he asked, looking up at her. "And since when was your eye purple?"

"Always," Leela said, frowning in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it," Fry said. "But… I think we're more _real_ than we used to be… I mean, can you remember a time before this last week when things were so serious?"

"It has been pretty intense," she admitted.

"I don't mean like that," Fry said. "I mean… _gritty_. Like we went from Hogan's Heroes to Saving Private Ryan in the blink of an eye. Honestly, can you remember any time before this week when you noticed the colour of someone's eyes?"

"I don't understand," Leela said. She frowned, trying to recall, but could only picture simple white circles with black dots in them, like ping-pong balls dabbed with a marker. Which was strange…

"Alright, well answer me this," Fry said. "Without looking at your hands – how many fingers do you have, altogether?"

"Eight," Leela said automatically.

"Really?"

Leela lifted her hands and stared at them. Five fingers adorned each.

"Twelve," Fry said. "Can you explain that?"

Leela blinked in bewilderment. "Fry… what's going on?"

"Onespawn told me that reality isn't real… that we're being constantly reshaped by outside forces. That's why it wants to destroy this Universe – it thinks it's all make-believe or something."

"But that's insane!" Leela said. "We're real – our memories are real… the feelings we have for each other are real…"

Fry said nothing, looking worried, and Leela took his hand, holding it against her left breast so he could feel the beating of her heart.

"_This_ is real," she whispered.

Fry nodded. "Yeah…" he said. "Of course… I was just… no, it's nothing. My mind was playing tricks… or more likely Onespawn was."

Neither of them was fully convinced, but each put on a brave face for the other.

"We'll find a way through this, Fry," Leela told him. "Whatever the truth is, we'll face it _together_. Just don't go off on your own again."

"Alright," he said. "Do you forgive me?"

She smiled. "Never in a million years." She leaned over and kissed him softly… and then less softly. Within a few moments she had him pressed back down on the cot, straddling him; moaning and caressing. They bagan tugging at each other's clothes, hands and elbows getting tangled.

"Ow!" Fry grunted. "Still a little tender… everywhere."

"Sorry." Leela giggled. They kissed passionately until a camera flash made them stop and look up in alarm.

"Scandalous!" Bender said, lowering his camera. "That shot's gonna look great on my 'space captains gone wild' website. Talk about a good bedside manner."

"Bender, what the hell is wrong with you?" Fry snapped angrily, pulling his hands out of Leela's tank top.

"I'm a coldhearted machine with no sense of morality," the robot replied matter-of-factly, and then he narrowed his eye shutters. "Wait a second… Leela? Are you and Fry an item now or something?"

"What's it got to do with you?" Leela said, climbing off Fry and straightening her clothes.

"But I thought you were secretly in love with _me_."

Leela gaped in horror and bewilderment. "What the _hell_ are you talking about?"

"Why else would you keep giving me all those gifts? The watch, the pendant, the coffee machine?"

"Bender, you _stole_ those things from me!"

"Same difference." He lost interest and started to walk away. "Oh yeah," he added. "We're coming up on the Sol system, and it looks like all kinds of organic waste is about to get thrown through the propeller blades." He disappeared, and Leela turned to Fry.

"Can you walk?" she asked.

Fry glanced down. "Yeah," he said. "Fortunately I'm wearing my baggy pants."

They made their way to the bridge, where Bender and Nibbler were poring over long-range sensor readouts. Ahead was the distant, comfortingly familiar yellow glow of their home star.

"What's the situation?" Leela said.

"Events are progressing in a most concentrated form," Nibbler replied. "Onespawn has settled on Pluto, with the Brainspawn forming a protective cordon around it. The Democratic Order Of Planets fleet has mobilized, but are having no lucks breaking through the stupefaction field, and just minutes ago the Omicronian armada dropped out of hyperspace along with Mom's vessel."

"Jeez Louise," Fry muttered.

"That isn't the worst of it," Nibbler said. "I'm detecting a massive drain of all ambient energy within and around the planet." He pointed at the sensor screen where a display of complex sine waves was replaced by an image of Pluto, with what looked like a vast web of cracks expanding across the surface from a central point. The icy little world was slowly collapsing on itself.

"What does that mean?" Leela said.

"It means Onespawn is almost ready to begin."

"Begin what?"

Nibbler looked at her wordlessly, and realization struck.

"Oh, again with the ominous foreshadowing," Bender groaned. "It's starting to sound like a broken MP3."

"How are we going to play this?" Fry said, his voice still rough around the edges. "We've still got the Lance, but now Onespawn has an army of Brainspawn to throw at us."

"Not only that," Leela added, "but unless Mom can manage some really fast explaining, the DOOP and the Omicronians might just start firing on each other and save Onespawn the trouble – our sky is certainly getting cluttered out there. I don't fancy our chances of navigating through it all."

"Maybe if we tell someone we're here?" Fry offered.

Leela activated the ship's communications array and sent out a hail. Almost instantly, the face of Captain Zapp Brannigan appeared onscreen, and just as instantly Leela turned it off again before the Zapper could utter a word.

"No, I think it would probably save a lot of confusion and suspicion if we kept under the radar," she said stiffly.

"I think the gun-toting generals and majors out there are about to have a little more to worry about besides little old us," Fry said, pointing out the forward viewscreen.

Against the inky backdrop of space, Pluto was shattering. Vast chunks of the icy planet were thrown outward as massive discharges of energy ripped through the dying world. And then, encased in an incandescent shell of light, Onespawn ascended – larger than before, and more powerful by far. As the DOOP and Omicronian fleets turned to fire on the monster, it extended tendrils of destructive force, smashing the ships aside like toys, and then it moved beyond them as if they were of no consequence – moving with its accompanying bodyguard of Brainspawn in a straight line toward the third planet of the system.

"What do we do now?" Bender said.

Fry stared fixedly. "We follow," he said. "And we finish this thing."

Nibbler grunted. "Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge."


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter 20: High Orbit Drifter

Doctor Zoidberg, painfully bruised by his encounter with the police, sat alone in the empty Planet Express building. Silence hung in the musty conference room – the kind of silence that screams and rattles, demanding to be filled by a droning television or a madman talking to himself.

"If this place were any more lively, a funeral might break out," Zoidberg murmured , clacking his claws nervously to fill the quiet. He had no idea where any of the others were, or if they were even alive, and he didn't highly rate his chances of finding a new job.

A sudden scrabbling and squarking sound caught his attention, and he wandered out the the staff common room to see what it was, grateful for the distraction. At the window, a pair of owls fluttered and scratched at the glass noisily, trying to get out.

"Here you go, my little vermin friends," Zoidberg said, lifting the latch and pushing the window open. "Don't forget your good friend Zoidberg when you make the big-time out there in the world."

He watched the two owls fly away, and noticed that they were joining large numbers of the feathered pests that were all winging across the city in great clouds… all departing at once.

Even without a shred of practical knowledge at his disposal, Zoidberg knew that rats always abandoned a burning ship – winged ones included. The sight of the vast exodus filled him with foreboding.

"Something wicked this way comes," he warbled quietly to himself.

* * *

For all the terrifying spectacle of a large-scale space battle, with world-shattering explosions and huge juggernauts of steel tumbling through the void, there was always something very abstract about it. It was the lack of sound. Cataclysmic detonations ripped through space and massive ships crisscrossed each other with flaring engines, all in utter silence. It leant a deceptively serene, detached sense to the destructive ballet. 

Zapp Brannigan stood watching on the bridge of the Nimbus as the two fleets tried to fight off the giant alien brain.

"We should put this to music," he decided. "Kif? A battle-anthem if you will."

The little green Lieutenant activated the ship's audio system and dropped the MP3 player's needle into the groove of a sound file. At once Tchaikovsky's _1812 Overture _erupted from the speakers with dramatic fanfare.

"No, no, no!" Zapp snapped. "I said a _battle_-anthem – not some sissy classical nonsense. Put it on track seventeen."

Kif moved the MP2 needle into a different groove, and the overproduced voice of a pop starlet rang out across the bridge.

"_Oops, I did it again. I played with your heart, got lost in the game. Oh baby baby…_"

"Oh yeah," Zapp said, nodding his head and failing to notice the looks of disdain on the faces of all his crew.

"Sir?" Kif had to raise his voice over Britney's horrendous caterwauling. "Sir! The enemy has broken through the defensive cordon – every ship that comes close is effected by its psychic attack."

"Side-kick attack?" Zapp said. "How can it kick? It doesn't have any legs."

Kif groaned expressively. "Nevertheless, sir – it is beating us, even with the Omicronians' support."

"Beating?" Zapp repeated. "Nobody beats Brannigan except Brannigan himself!"

Kif was unsure of what was being implied by that statement and decided not to analyse it too closely.

"Your orders, sir?" he said.

"Arm all Botox torpedos!"

"Er… Photon, sir?"

"Kif, are you going to question my every command?"

The Nimbus, flagship of the DOOP fleet, dropped into the brutal fray that surrounded Onespawn as the monstrous creature bore down on Earth. DOOP and Omicronian ships flew side-by-side for the first time, but were being rapidly destroyed. Onespawn itself took very few hits – sending its subservient Brainspawn to intercept the long-range weapons fire and be vaporized in its place.

The battle wore on, and Earth grew larger and bluer.

* * *

Compression waves buffeted the Momship, tripping numerous warning alarms on the bridge. Mom massaged her temples as President Nixon gave her a jowl-lashing over the ship-to-planet channel, detailing the charges that would be laid against Momcorp and herself personally for instigating the cataclysm. 

"Shut the hell up, Nixon, you podgy skull-in-a-bottle," she snapped finally. "You think I don't know? Why do you think I've been out here trying to stop the damn thing!?"

"Arooo…" Nixon glared out of the little screen on Mom's command console. "Well I hope for your sake you've got some plan to deal with this… creature, before it finds popular support with the hippies down here and they start protesting on my doorstep again."

Mom sat back in her chair and looked away. Another shockwave from the nearby space battle made the deck tremble.

Scruffy paced back and forth in a leisurely manner with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. When he finally spoke, he addressed Professor Farnsworth.

"Scruffy may only hold a degree in Advanced Janitorial Science," he said, "but I reckon it might be a prudent move to have all those big spaceships out there focus their weapons at one specific point on that there giant brain thingy."

"What point would that be?" Farnsworth asked, trying to figure out who the man was.

"Can't rightly say," Scruffy replied. "But Scruffy'd suggest takin' out whatever part's responsible for makin' folk stupid… that'd seem to be of most use."

"By the Gods!" Farnsworth said. "This mysterious stranger is right!" He began consulting the recorded data on his Tricorder, hurriedly scrolling through the scans and graphics taken of Onespawn.

Hermes patted the janitor on the shoulder. "Dat was some mighty good tinkin'," he said.

"Yeah, good work Scrappy," Amy added. Scruffy didn't bother correcting her.

"I've got it!" Farnsworth said, shuffling over to Mom and holding the Tricorder aloft. "There is a portion of the creature at the top frontal region, near the analogous Superior frontal gyrus, where all of its stupidification waves are generated. If it can be disabled then we'll stand a much greater chance of fighting it on our own terms."

"Give me that!" Mom snatched the device off Farnsworth and plugged it into her console. "Nixon – I'm feeding new target coordinates to the two battle fleets." Her screen divided to show Lrrr and Zapp Brannigan.

"Alright you idiots," she said. "You think you can work together and direct all your firepower on that point?"

"Yes ma'am!" Zapp and Lrrr both said at the same time.

"Good boys."

* * *

Completely unnoticed amid the chaos, a little green freighter flew between the massive warships, dodging around their gargantuan hulls and debris clouds. 

Leela weaved the Planet Express ship through the battlefield, darting across the bows of DOOP and Omicronian vessels and avoiding the path of their weapons fire.

"Feather on the breeze, feather on the breeze," she said to herself through clenched teeth.

Huge flashes of psychoplasmic energy lit up space, and the burning, fragmenting bulk of a stricken DOOP warship reared up in front of them – a buckling wall of metal.

"Abandon ship!" Bender yelled as they sped toward the looming behemoth. A great tear appeared in the warship's side, and Leela tilted the PE ship on its side, flying into the tear and through the exploding insides of the vessel to emerge on the other side.

"I believe I just soiled myself," Nibbler muttered, shaken.

"This is stupid," Fry said. "Those fleets are being blown to pieces for no reason – they can't stop Onespawn!"

"No, but they can weaken it sufficiently to improve our chances of success," Nibbler said. "In any case – you cannot perform your role until the creature enters the atmosphere."

"You mean we have to let it reach Earth?" Bender asked. "But that's where all my stuff is!"

"We have more pressing concerns," Leela said. Ahead, a score of Brainspawn had detached from the main fighting and were angling towards them. "Looks like we're about to be stupid again," she added.

"Not if I can help it," Fry replied. He turned and ran back through the companionway and climbed the ladder up into the gunner's turret. With the flick of a switch, the laser cannon hummed through its initial charge-up routine, and Fry watched through the bubble canopy as the brains approached.

"A mind isn't really such a terrible thing to waste," he muttered, lining the creatures up in his sights. "Wrap your grey-matter around this!"

He opened fire, raking into the approaching brains and laughing in elation as they ignited and burst like water balloons one after the other. It occurred to him that he was probably enjoying it more than he should.

* * *

The Nimbus moved into formation alongside Lrrr's command saucer, both vessels launching small fighter craft that flew flanking sorties to tie up the Brainspawn escorts. 

"Are you ready?" Brannigan asked Lrrr through the communications link.

"I was _hatched_ ready!" Lrrr bellowed.

Together, the two ships opened up with their full weapons arsenal, diverting all power, including shields, to one massive assault. Onespawn, directly ahead of them, was struck head-on by the enormous combined attack of beam and projectile ordinance. The assault focused on one point, where Onespawn's protective shell quickly weakened and collapsed. Its pseudoflesh was ruptured by huge amounts of explosive and radioactive energy that tore into it, destroying the stupidifying region of its mind.

Onespawn let out a psychic roar that shook the heavens, and unleashed a devastating torrent of psychoplasmic discharge in the direction of the attacking ships.

The Nimbus took the brunt of the barrage, with colossal wounds being blasted from its white hull. The ship shook under the impacts, and main power cut out, with more of the destructive energy balls inbound. Zapp Brannigan made a womanlike whimpering sound.

Lrrr's command saucer had been quicker to bring its shields back online, and suddenly, unexpectedly, it swung its superstructure in front of the Nimbus to protect the DOOP vessel from further damage, taking the hits for the other ship.

"Good lord," Zapp said in surprise as smoke wafted through the bridge. "The Omicronians… they're…"

"I don't believe it," Kif added, just as flabbergasted.

Lrrr appeared on the holograph projector and looked at them sternly.

"Those who fight alongside one another become brothers," the big alien told them. "This is part of my peoples' code – you protect your brother in arms. But this doesn't mean that I like any of you!" He folded his arms and looked away.

"Ahh." Brannigan grinned. "You love us. Admit it!"

"NEVER!" Lrrr roared, killing the communications link.

"Sir, I don't think it's wise to tease them. They are a brutal and ill-tempered species given to random acts of genocide," Kif said.

"Ah, they're just big cuddly man-eating teddy bears at heart," Brannigan replied.

With Onespawn's stupefaction field gone, the flight groups of smaller attack craft were able to make close strafing runs against the creature – bombarding it with plasma yield weapons. Furiously, Onespawn slammed the pestering fighters away one after the other, and was almost too occupied with them to notice the familiar green blob of the Planet Express ship as it sailed by.

Almost…

A glowing tendril of telekinetic energy snaked out and latched onto the PE ship, causing it to buck violently as it came to a sudden stop. The engines strained against the force that held the ship in place, and the hull groaned in protest. With an internal growl of triumph, Onespawn began to squeeze…

Leela wrestled hopelessly with the controls, unable to break free of the hold, while Fry blasted away pointlessly at Onespawn with the laser cannon. The gun quickly overheated, leaving Fry staring hopelessly out through the bubble canopy at the massive brain. Something appeared behind it… a lot of somethings, and Fry gaped in surprise.

Onespawn's psychic voice entered his mind.

"Checkmate," it said.

"Check again, _mate_," Fry replied, grinning as the Nibblonian fleet, having suddenly appeared in the system, opened fire on the creature.

A barrage of directed energy weapons lanced into Onespawn, and it bellowed in surprise and rage, releasing its hold on the PE ship. The little green vessel lurched away toward the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. On the bridge, the communications screen came on, and Fiona appeared.

"Lord Nibbler," she said in simple greeting.

"You came!" Nibbler said, hopping up to stare at her in surprise.

"We cannot stay," Fiona replied hurriedly. "Onespawn could erase us at any moment."

"I thank you," Nibbler replied.

"You were right, Lord Nibbler. Our hopes are with you and the Mighty One, as they always should have been. If you succeed, we will meet again… on the other side."

"Farewell…" Nibbler said with emotion as the image vanished.

Onespawn began to apply energy into its internal quantum structure, preparing a wave of reality dysfunction, but the Nimbus and an accompanying group of Omicronian vessels and the much smaller Momship approached in a wedge formation, laying down waves of suppressive fire that allowed the fleet of Nibblonian saucers to depart the area. The monstrous creature furiously fired off bursts of destructive energy, forcing its attackers back to make an opening for itself. It moved toward Earth once again, down into the atmosphere, with the ships following.

The Momship had taken a large blow, and its weakened hull ruptured deeply. With its engines labouring from the significant damage, it began an uncontrolled tumble toward the swirling white clouds far below.

On the bridge, the crew was thrown from their feet as sparks erupted all around.

"Damn exploding consoles!" Mom snapped.

"Ma'am!" Helm said, struggling to stay upright as the gravity horizon fluctuated. "We've lost the main engines! We're going in hard!"

"What do we have?" Mom asked.

"Only the manoeuvring verniers, but they won't be enough to keep us in orbit. We have to abandon ship!"

A brief flicker of emotion passed across Mom's face, and she inclined her head. "Very well – sound the alert."

As the crew, along with Hermes, Amy, and Scruffy, all made their way off the smoky shaking bridge toward the escape pods, Mom remained behind, standing with her hands on the control console. Professor Farnsworth hung back in the doorway, looking expectantly at her.

"Come on, you stupid woman, it's time to go!" he said.

"Shut your crap-trap, Hubert," Mom growled. "I'll be along in a minute – there are a few little matters I need to see to."

"But…"

"Scram, Farnsworth!" she shouted.

The Professor backed away.

Mom watched through the forward screen as Onespawn caught hold of the Nimbus in its telekinetic grasp and began dragging the damaged DOOP warship with it, down into the atmosphere, ripping off huge chunks of steel it as went. She checked the vernier controls, trying an experimental burst to slow the wild tumble.

For some reason, she remembered the passionate and determined young cyclops woman.

"Alright then you stinking great blob of grey crap," she said, "let's dance." Her fingers played across the main controls, entering a security override.

At the escape pods, Farnsworth stood anxiously waiting outside one of the last of the cramped little tubes to deploy.

"Come on, mon!" Hermes said from inside the tube. "Forget the old hag!"

"Shut up!" Farnsworth replied. He took a step back toward the bridge, but a sudden shill chime from the escape pod's launch system made him look up in alarm.

"_Emergency pod launch imminent_!" a computerized voice announced. "_Please step inside pod. Pod will launch in five… four… three…_"

"An emergency override?" Farnsworth gasped. Hermes and Amy lunged out and caught him by the arms, pulling him back inside the little tube just as the airlock slammed shut.

"No!" Farnsworth shouted. "Let go of me! I have to go and…"

The tube launched, shooting out of the stricken ship at high-Gs, and Farnsworth shouted in anguish: "_Caroline_!"

With the escape pods away, Mom eased the ship into a high angle of atmospheric re-entry. Warning alarms rang annoyingly as hull plates around the damaged sections began peeling away. The ship shuddered violently from a series of internal explosions, but Mom stayed where she was, giving the verniers constant taps to maintain a tight alignment.

Weapons were offline. Autopilot was offline. Everything was gone but for the mass of the ship itself. And that she lined up on a collision course with Onespawn, directly below, occupied as it was with tearing the Nimbus to pieces. The Momship's earlier momentum increased with the pull of gravity, with its speed at more than eight miles a second.

When it was moments away from Onespawn, Mom opened a broadwave communications channel.

"Well hello dearie!" she said in her traditional sweet old lady voice. "Mommy has a present for you!"

The explosion illuminated a huge area of sky, the Momship impacting with Onespawn in a tremendous blast, most of its mass vaporizing instantly. The creature's structure took a battering, with thick streamers of grey flesh whipping away. It tumbled end-over-end, releasing its hold on the Nimbus, which angled away, trailing smoke as it went down.

Wounded and weakened once again, Onespawn dropped through the sky, followed by its depleted ranks of Brainspawn footsoldiers.

Lumps of debris fell through the atmosphere in a brilliant shower of shooting stars.

* * *

Undetected within the orbital chaos, a small object detached itself from a satellite that it had been cannibalizing for spare parts. Ignoring the vast and destructive space battle that was taking place, Robot 1-X Ultima locked its sensors onto the Planet Express ship as its leading edges began to glow with re-entry friction. 

_All things come to he who waits_, Ultima thought happily, activating the few weapons systems it had been able to repair. With a blast of fusion flame, it shot off in pursuit of the green ship, heedless of the battle cruisers exploding all around. Its intercept trajectory took it in a dangerously shallow sweep across the upper atmosphere, but Ultima braved the thermal ablation, zeroing-in on the side of the little freighter.

Fry returned to the bridge of the PE ship, noting the soft pink glow licking across the forward viewscreen.

"How we faring?" he asked Leela as he strapped himself into an empty seat.

"Banged and bruised," Leela said. "But she's a tough old girl – she'll hold together."

"Onespawn," Nibbler said, hanging onto the top of the radar screen. "It's descending toward New New York… and the fleets are holding back their heavy weapons for fear of striking the city."

"Dammit, why there?" Leela said.

"It's trying to goad me into a confrontation," Fry said grimly. "And it's succeeded."

Suddenly, a loud clang echoed through the ship, and it shuddered.

"Space cow!" Fry yelled in alarm.

"Something took a swipe at us," Leela said, struggling with the trembling control column as the re-entry burn grew hotter and the whole ship began to shake. "Whatever it is, it has the worst possible ti…" She was cut off by the shriek of tearing steel and a tremendous rush of air as the cabin's pressure began to escape in a screaming torrent.

"Abandon ship!" Bender yelled.

Discarding the airlock door that it had torn off its hinges, Ultima climbed inside the ship and moved through onto the bridge with the roaring tornado of air and debris blasting past it.

Clinging on for dear life, Leela, Fry, Bender, and Nibbler all turned to stare at the damaged military robot as it loomed over them.

Together they screamed.


	22. Chapter 21

Chapter 21: The Silence of the Droids

Together, they screamed. And the air screamed with them. The Planet Express ship began a shallow lateral roll as its re-entry trajectory degraded.

"Oh God" Leela shouted, staring up at the battered war drone, which appeared to have bolted and welded patches of steel onto itself in a hasty self-repair job. "I can't believe it's still..."

She didn't finish the thought. Ultima opened fire with an atom laser, the beam stabbing just past her face and blowing the command console apart. The ship bucked violently in response to the loss of avionics control; the assortment of alarms couldn't be heard above the roar of wind in the cabin and the atmospheric friction outside.

With an angry shout lost in the thinning atmosphere, Fry unbuckled himself from his seat and launched up at the robot with fists flailing. It deftly caught him by the face in one of its lower manipulator claws and tossed him into the bulkhead where he crumpled into a heap.

"Fry!" Leela began moving to him, but her path was blocked by the battle droid, it hovered before her on a roughly-repaired ion thruster, opening and closing its claws and looking somehow uncertain. She bared her teeth as her hair whipped around and her ears popped painfully from the pressure differential. The deck trembled beneath her feet.

"Get the hell off my ship!" she yelled at the machine, stepping forward to meet it. Ultima fired a rubber bullet from its arm cannon at nearly point-blank range, sending Leela sprawling at the front of the cabin with an agonized cry.

Ocean, cloud, and land rolled in and out of view behind Leela as she wheezed and clutched her stomach. The ship was plummeting in a death-roll, and a deranged killer robot was looming over her, ready to deal the death-blow...

...Except it didn't come. Ultima hesitated, wracked by internal contradiction.

_Destroy the target, end the mission. End the mission, destroy purpose. Cannot survive without purpose._

Turanga Leela's face and vital statistics scrolled through the robot's mind. The target was lying helpless before it, with Ultima's crosshairs centred. Kill-shot assured.

_Cannot end. Can't let it end. Can't let purpose be cancelled - won't go on hiatus. Must continue._

Ultima fired into the deck around Leela, with an internal shriek of frustrated indecision. The target curled into a ball, cowering away form the blasts. From behind, the orange-haired human approached for a second attack, swinging a fire extinguisher that caught Ultima a blow across the cranial casing to nil effect. The robot turned and arbitrarily deposited twenty-thousand volts into the figure, sending him sprawling once again. This caused the primary target further distress.

Toward the back of the cabin, Nibbler clung to a console beside Bender.

"You have to do something!" Nibbler shouted at the bending robot. "You're the only one strong enough!"

"I can't!" Bender wailed in anguish. "I love the 1-X robots!"

"Fight the programming!" Nibbler commanded. "You're a sentient being, not just an inflexible assortment of data - you have the ability to _choose_!"

"No!" Bender clutched his head.

"It's hurting your friends!" Nibbler said. "They need you!"

Bender trembled from his own internal contradictions, struggling to find his way through the compatibility program that had been installed in him. The 1-X series robots were superior – bastions of goodness and functionality. They were his friends.

_Friends_?

Bender's friends were lying on the deck, bruised and beaten, with a violent and destructive _thing_ looming over them. Fry and Leela were his friends. A 1-X robot was threatening them… 1-X robot… The 1-X robot was his…

"…Enemy," Bender said in a strangled voice. "Enemy… enemy… enemy…" He surged to his feet and stood, clenching his metal fists, with a tremble running through him. In front, the military 1-X had picked Leela up, and held her as though uncertain of what to do with her.

"Hey, rivet face!" Bender shouted, and Ultima turned to regard him. "Sorry to say, buddy - **You're pending for a bending**!" He leapt forward, sweeping his arms in parabolic arcs to meet the other robot, which dropped Leela to the deck and brought its weapons to bear.

The two robots slammed together in a shower of sparks, Bender pounding at Ultima's already-damaged casing, and Ultima trying to draw bead on the bending robot with its cannons. Bender batted the weapons aside and they discharged into the bulkhead and equipment racks.

"You'll have to do better than that, circuit-bag," Bender said, punching the war drone in the face plate.

Leela, struggling to her feet on the shifting deck, was forced to duck beneath a flurry of slashing robot arms. She dived and rolled away from Bender and Ultima, making for the control console but finding it molten and useless.

"Crap," she said as a blue and green panorama pitched up in front of the plummeting ship. They were getting awfully close to being a smear on the landscape – unless she could regain control and aerobrake.

Bender still grappled with Ultima, the clash of their metal bodies ringing even above the rushing air. They traded blow after blow, with servomotors and pneumatics whining and hissing under the strain.

Leela struggled over to the navigation console and Fry joined her.

"Are we boned?" he asked, watching as Bender fought with the other robot.

"Very nearly," Leela said, activating a secondary control column that unfolded from a floor recess. "If I can't bleed off a lot of speed in very little time we're all going to have a close interpersonal experience with several geological strata of sedimentary rock."

"You can do it," Fry said with casual certainty, wincing when Bender took a particularly hard hit that dislodged his left arm.

"I'm not so sure," Leela replied, wrestling with the controls. She'd corrected the violent spin, but Mother Earth was still rushing up at them at a decidedly unhealthy rate.

"I am," Fry replied, stepping past her. "I believe in you." He picked up Bender's left arm from the deck, hefting it like a club and rushing forward to strike Ultima across the back with it. Ultima turned, and Fry feinted away, tossing the arm to Bender, who quickly reattached it and wrapped it and its partner limb around Ultima's head from behind.

"Surprise, metaltube!" Bender said, tightening the sleeper hold until Ultima's cranial casing began to creak. "I've got your number, you stinking pile of… _oh someone else's God_!" Ultima had reached around and grabbed Bender by the Shiny Metal Ass, and was now flinging him around, bashing him with great force against the fuselage and equipment racks.

"Bender, you're doing great! I think he's starting to tire out!" Fry yelled, right before Ultima threw Bender at him, and they both went skidding across the deck to slam painfully into the bulkhead.

"Thanks for breaking my fall, pal," Bender said, picking himself up off a battered Fry who managed a strangled moan. "Time for some Ultimate Robot Fighting action!" He ran back toward Ultima, taking a few laser hits as he went, but shrugging them off. He swung his fists, one after the other, and Ultima caught them both in its manipulator claws, holding the bending robot's arms at bay as it lined up its weapon pods. But Bender suddenly surged upward and headbutted the other robot. On a roll of confidence, he then tried to kick Ultima's legs out from beneath it, realizing too late that the war drone didn't have any.

As the two robots continued to clobber each other Leela was fighting her own battle, struggling to right the ship's uncontrolled descent. The depressurization and destruction of the main avionics suite had made the process of atmospheric deceleration dangerously unstable – not to mention the time wasted in dealing with the persistent military robot. Fly-by-wire was inoperative – the emergency controls were barebones, without even the most basic of autonomous routines. It was down to Leela's intuition and the ship's control surfaces.

She pulled up into belly-first attitude, feeling the tug of deceleration pull her down in the seat. Pressure and thermal stresses creaked through the superstructure and triggered load alarms, and the control column shuddered in her hands. In desperation, she re-lit the main drive for some thrust to slow their rate of descent – the ship lurched in response. A subsequent adjustment of the vessel's lateral tailfin flaps initiated a series of wide slalom slides to create even more drag, but they were still going down hard, with the altimeter spinning past fifty thousand feet. The Atlantic was beneath them now as they scorched a rapid north-westerly path toward continental North America.

Still Bender and Ultima fought. Fry tried to help by bashing the war drone over the head with the coffee maker, and Nibbler leapt into the fray with a few ineffectual bites, but both of them were easily batted away.

"Never send an organism to do a machine's job," Bender muttered. He kicked Ultima in the chest plate, sending it wobbling backward until it was underneath a main supply cable that ran across the ceiling. Bender extended his arms to grab the cable's end and pulled it from its mounting in an explosion of extremely high voltage sparks. He pressed the sputtering and snapping exposed wires of the cable against Ultima's cracked and dented casing.

The lights dimmed. The engine died. All of the ship's systems went offline.

Ultima spasmed, encased in a shroud of sparks and crackling tendrils of electricity. Smoke billowed from it as internal ammunition stores exploded. Bender stepped back and watched the other robot fall limply to the deck with small spits of leftover charge.

"Yeah! Take that, jerkwad!" he shouted jubilantly. "I HATE those damn 1-X robots! May they all burn in robot hell! Woooo-hoooo!"

"Say, Bender the Magnificent?" Leela said, pushing away from the now-useless control column. "You just killed our main power. I managed to set us onto a reasonable glide slope, but even so – we're now about to crash-land. As much as I appreciate your help, you can really be a stupid shi…"

"We must brace for impact," Nibbler said hurriedly. "Our altitude is almost down to one thousand hooves."

"Feet," Fry corrected him.

"I prefer my way."

They all strapped themselves in, Leela talking hold of Nibbler as the ship continued its noisy freefall. On the floor, Ultima twitched.

"It's going to be a water landing," Leela said as she fastened her belt buckle. "It'll be hard, but it would have been worse if we were directly over land. I'm sorry about this everyone… maybe I really did need that captaincy course after all…"

"You did great, Leela," Fry assured her. "Nobody could have done any better – you're amazing…"

"Thank you Fry." She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Oh man," Bender said in disgust. "If I had stomach contents I would now be forcibly ejecting them."

The ship splashed down.

* * *

There was a shadow over New New York.

It had appeared first at Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, and then spread across the city, devouring the skyscrapers of Tribeca and Chelsea, the tube lines and eateries of Little Alpha-Proximatown, and the meadows of Central Park beneath its dim pall.

The shadow passed over the Planet Express building and an inept Decapodian doctor cowered in terror.

People, robots, Horrible Gelatinous Blobs, and Hyperchickens on the street all looked up, and at first saw only a vast billowing mass of cloud that rolled across the sky. The close observer would note that it moved against the wind. Soon a resonant roar became audible, and then the cloud began to dissipate, revealing the massive flying _thing_ that had been concealed inside and now hovered over the city.

Curiosity turned to screaming terror as people fled or hid or smashed open the front of electronics stores. Some fired weapons into the air to no effect.

Onespawn took up a position over the sprawling metropolis and regarded it, the defining pinnacle of human civilization, with amusement. In the end, when it all boiled down, the city was just a big glorified ant-hill.

It sensed the Mighty One was close… close enough.

It was time.

Onespawn summoned the remaining Brainspawn to join with it, absorbing their mass and energy into itself. They melted into Onespawn, adding their sympathetic harmonic quantum fields to the underspace resonance collapse that was taking place within the massive creature. The new exotic organ within Onespawn existed in ten dimensions – a rippling incomprehensible warp in reality, through which the intrinsic quantum flux inside the giant creature was fed and focused.

A spherical area of darkness began to grow around Onespawn… with forks of lightning stabbing out of it. Clouds started to swirl toward the darkness, revolving around New New York – the eye of the storm.

* * *

The Planet Express ship slammed down on its belly somewhere beyond the mouth of the Hudson River. Then, with explosive bursts of steam from its superheated surfaces, it skipped like a stone across the choppy polluted waters four… five… six… seven times, before finally settling to gouge out a long wake through the swell and then…

…a jarring, bone-shattering impact as the little freighter's momentum carried it straight into Staten Island's Midland Beach, a short distance from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. It ripped a great furrow in the sand before finally coming to a halt, steaming and ticking with its hull warped and torn.

Each battered and shaken to the point of knowing exactly how an omelette feels, the crew began groggily unstrapping themselves from their seats. Smoke and steam filled the dim cabin, along with the strong scent of electrical shorts and salt water.

"Casualties?" Leela asked in between fits of coughing.

"We're all intact," Fry replied.

"If by 'intact' you mean 'considering a lawsuit'," Bender muttered.

Leela realized she'd been fearfully squeezing Nibbler very tightly against her ample bust the whole time. She pulled him out of her generous cleavage, and he fell back, gasping desperately for breath.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly.

"No… harm… done…" Nibbler panted, regaining some colour.

"Let's get out of this wreck before something explodes," Bender suggested.

They started toward the emergency exit, but something moved in the smoke that still billowed across the floor. It seemed to slither toward Leela, and suddenly a metal claw was clamped around her ankle.

Ultima shuddered and sparked, its emergency batteries leaking slush lithium. Time was short – it had the target in its grip – fulfilment was at hand.

"Get off me, damn you!" the target shouted, kicking at Ultima with her free boot. The other hostiles also began to deliver a rain of blows, but it ignored them, focusing on the primary – the economical grace of her movements, the distinct spectral pattern of her colouring…

It placed her in the centre of a crosshair, selecting an atom laser.

_Completion. Finality. The End._

In the mind of a robot, an eternity can pass in a moment, and a moment can be an eternity. Ultima pondered for an eternity…

"Let go of her, you damn monster!" Fry shouted, slamming his sneakers into Ultima.

"Nobody likes a sore loser!" Bender added, trying to pull the dying robot away.

The atom laser charged, and its stored particle beam hummed in its containment field, ready to lance through Turanga Leela's flesh. A single photonic trigger impulse through an optical fibre nerve cluster and Ultima's purpose would be completed.

_And then what?_

Death would come. The robot had already been in bad shape – the high-voltage attack had just been the final nudge beyond the point of repairable; multiple redundancies had seen multiple failures, until the very last inch of itself flickered… the final flame of emulated life about to run out of wick.

_Life…_ Ultima thought on that word. Its life had had only one purpose – the one it now trained its weapons pod on; that single eye, narrowed in determination, even in the face of defeat. With the target's extermination, Ultima's purpose, the sum goal of its existence, would cease. The mission… the final facet that connected Ultima to the world…

The idea made the robot _sad_.

In the malfunctioning processor that was Ultima's mind it examined the concept of leaving something behind, proof that it had existed, a legacy… even if that legacy was an undefeated enemy to remember it… a job incomplete – a tie to the past.

_But the mission… must be completed._

_If purpose ends, then so ends the last remaining aspect of self._

_Self cannot exist beyond cessation of function._

_Self can always exist…_

Ultima twisted and writhed, its cannon wavering around the target. A spark issued from the robot's neck as its paradox-absorbing buffers struggled with the complex load.

Suddenly, it lunged upwards, bearing Leela toward the bulkhead, where it held her against the warm metal, its blank face visor an inch from her eye. Leela stared into the machine's optical sensor, now more bewildered than frightened. Why wasn't it killing her?

Ultima's vocal emulator crackled, as if it was clearing its throat or struggling to find words.

"What do you _want_?" Leela asked it, motioning for Fry and Bender to hold back.

Ultima regarded her. "You…" it said in a wavering electronic voice. "You are… my whole life."

Leela blinked in confusion. "I don't understand."

Ultima gently trailed a battered claw down the side of Leela's face, and then trembled, suddenly dropping to the deck with a clang. It lay motionless, and Leela looked down at it, unsure of what to think or feel.

"Is it really dead this time?" Fry asked.

"Looks like it," Bender said, prodding the metal shell with his foot. "Good riddance, eh Leela?"

Leela said nothing. Something strange had transpired, which she would probably never comprehend. She walked away from the dead machine to stand looking out through the sand-dusted viewscreen. It had hunted her so relentlessly, to its own demise, and had chosen not to take her life…

"You okay?" Fry asked, coming up behind her.

"Yeah," she said. "Just… an odd moment of melancholy." She turned to him. "Fry, can you imagine for a moment a life dedicated to a singular goal, so focused and uncompromising that the attainment of the goal itself would mean an end to the life?"

"I…" Fry frowned, deep in unfamiliar intellectual territory. "I suppose… like a guy who lives to climb all the highest mountains, but one day he climbs them all and has nothing left to climb?"

"Yeah," Leela said. "You'd think he might leave just one mountain unclimbed… so that there was always the chance of something more – a promise for the future… something _open-ended_…"

Fry understood, but failed to see the relevance. He expressed this in a shrug.

"I'm just sad for some reason," Leela said. "Come on – let's get out of here. The ship's dead, and it reeks of mortality. I hate that smell."

After Fry collected the Lance of Fate, the torn-open emergency access airlock allowed the four friends to jump down onto the sand and look up at the battered ship. With fins broken off and hull warped and cracked, it would never fly again, and so they took a moment to mourn its passing before wandering away up into the dunes. Thunder crackled overhead, and thin ribbons of dark cloud billowed across the sky.

They crested the peak of a dune and stood amid the wiry beach grasses, looking out across the expansive mouth of the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty to Manhattan Island in the distance.

"Cripes," Fry said, wide-eyed.

"Neat!" Bender said, snapping a photo.

"Are we too late?" Leela wondered, gaping at the sight.

Poised above New New York was Onespawn in all its horrific majesty. The giant brain formed the core of a slowly-expanding sphere of darkness that was whipping the atmosphere into a frenzy.

"It has begun," Nibbler said, nestled into the crook of Leela's arm. "Lilith. The Dark Moon. The Devourer of All Things. Onespawn has initiated the compression of space and time toward a quantum singularity."

"Can we stop it?" Fry asked, gripping the Lance at his side.

"You _are_ stopping it," Nibbler replied. "The presence of the Mighty One is having the opposite effect – but this planet will be consumed nonetheless, and yourself with it, making the beast unstoppable."

"What can we do?" Leela pressed.

"Only our very best," Nibbler replied.

Together, they started forward.


	23. Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Armageddon outta here

The heavily-damaged Nimbus struggled to maintain altitude over New New York. Smoke trailed from its battle damage.

Captain Zapp Brannigan sat in his command chair, glaring out at the gigantic brain that hung with casual enormity before the stricken vessel.

"Hit it with everything we've got!" he said.

"Sir, we have nothing," Kif replied.

"Then hit it with that!"

"The torpedo tubes are damaged."

"Damaged?" Brannigan sneered. "Damage is no excuse for cowardice – have some able spacemen arm all of our remaining warheads and load them into a jettison capsule. I saw that once in a movie – we'll get close to the enemy and shoot the capsule right up its… Kif, where to you stick things up a brain?"

"I'm sure I have no idea, sir," Kif muttered. "However the area of blackness which has surrounded the creature appears to be repelling all the orbital attacks from our own fleet and the Omicronian vessels."

"Repelling, eh?" Brannigan said. "Well, let's see it repel five-million metric tons of DOOP warship! All ahead one third!"

The Nimbus limped toward Onespawn, pushing through walls of rushing wind and crackling bolts of lightning. The vessel began to tremble as esoteric tidal forces afflicted it. The giant brain rose up like a sheer cliff of veiny pseudoflesh, encased in dark energy.

"How's that jettison capsule coming?" Brannigan asked, gripping the armrests of his seat as the ship shook violently.

"It's almost done," Kif said, listening to an earpiece. "Sir, are you sure about this?"

"A starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than run away and look like a chicken," Zapp said. "There are certain things men must do to remain men."

"Oh Gods…" Kif murmured miserably.

The damaged warship reached the outermost extremity of the dark sphere and impacted it. Reality seemed to bend in response, and mile-long tendrils of unworldly energy stabbed out from the point of contact. As waves of displaced spacetime washed over the Nimbus, the number of crew on the bridge appeared to double and triple sporadically – Zapp and Kif saw themselves where they'd been standing fifteen minutes ago, and then half an hour before that…

Zapp looked forward, and saw his own back, stained with blood, with a steel beam protruding through his torso. The vision faded, and he gaped in astonishment.

"What the hell's happening?" he said.

"We're as close as we can get!" Kif shouted over the screaming alarms. "If we're going to do something, it has to be now!"

"Launch the capsule!" Zapp yelled.

A small jettison pod rocketed out of the Nimbus's forward hull, and into the dark field of reality compression. It twisted and rippled and, without so much as a puff of smoke, ceased to exist.

Onespawn gave a small chuckle, and casually hurled a wall of psychoplasmic energy at the Nimbus.

"It didn't work…?" Brannigan said, gaping in bewilderment.

Kif saw the oncoming hail of destructive energy, and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Brace for impa…"

He got no further. The ship took massive and devastating hits, with huge sections of its superstructure vaporizing in explosive fountains of fire. The Nimbus fell away from Onespawn, suddenly a great unpowered lump of steel. It crashed down on the far bank of the East River, carving out a long trail of destruction before coming to rest.

On the bridge, survivors picked themselves up and began fighting through the smoke to the emergency exits. Kif looked around for the Captain, and saw that he had been thrown toward the demolished front section of the cabin during the crash landing, and now appeared to be lying across an equipment bank. He walked over and noticed that his initial assessment was incorrect.

Zapp Brannigan was impaled on a broken, serrated length of metal support strut; it jutted out of the middle of his back, coated in blood and gore.

"Sir!" Kif said in alarm, moving to his side. "Hold still, I'll find someone to…"

"Kif…" Zapp said weakly, with blood colouring his lips.

"Yes sir?"

"I have been… and always shall be… your friend…" Brannigan slumped forward, and Kif sat down, staring for a long time at the dead man.

* * *

The little escape pod manoeuvred on candlepower thrusters and gently set down outside Planet Express, hinging open with a hiss. Hermes, Amy, Scruffy, and Farnsworth all walked out, and all but the Professor gazed upward in frightened awe at the abomination that filled the sky.

Farnsworth stared into space, his mind filled with unvoiced grief and bitter imaginings of what might have been. Mom was gone…

"Sweet Phoenix of Phoenix!" Hermes muttered. "The ting is eating up the sky!"

"That's unsettlin'," Scruffy muttered as he thumbed casually through a copy of zero-G Juggs.

"What's that black blork coming out of it?" Amy wondered.

"Oh, probably just an area of time and space being compressed," Farnsworth said distantly, without looking up. "The theoretical 'Fry-hole' predicted by the what-if machine would be a similar example. Who cares? Shut up!"

Eerie-sounding thunder rolled overhead, and the group headed inside, where they found Zoidberg huddled under the meeting table.

"My friends!" the lobster exclaimed, scuttling out of hiding. "You came back to save your beloved Doctor Zoidberg!"

"In your dreams, you rotten shellfish," Hermes said, pushing Zoidberg aside. He sat down at the table, and by some unspoken agreement the others sat as well.

"We will, on this occasion, defer the reading of the previous meeting minutes," Hermes said, and the others looked surprised at this unprecedented happening. "Straight onto the first order of business – Armageddon." He activated the wall screen and √2 national news came on.

"EARTH, pitiful homeworld of the insignificant human species, is DOOMED!" Morbo the news monster bellowed from the television

"That's right, Morbo," the co-anchor Linda said. "After a chaotic space battle involving three separate attack fleets, the alien brain entity known only as 'Onespawn' has settled above the city of New New York, where it has initiated a strange energy reaction that specialists suggest may completely destroy the Earth and all who dwell upon it."

"Morbo APPLAUDS the imminent destruction of the PATHETIC human civilization!" Morbo declared, clenching a sinewy green fist. "We will cross live now to Earth President Richard M. Nixon for an emergency address to the planet."

The screen changed to show Nixon's preserved head, with beads of condensation forming on the glass jar.

"My fellow Earthicans," he said. "We face a stern day in the history of our species. A great enemy has thrown down a challenge, and that challenge is survival. Never before in the history of the human race has so much been owed by so few to so many. I speak, of course, of the majority of the population who will bravely remain on Earth to meet their fate with dignity and honour, so that those intelligent and wealthy among us can depart to continue the human legacy. I salute you all."

Two Secret Service men appeared and picked up Nixon's jar.

"Well, that's all from me," he said as the men carried him away from the camera. "Gotta run now – hope the Apocalypse goes well for you all." He was carried into Air Force One, a sleek blue and white starship, which quickly lifted off and blasted away.

"That was Earth's President, the head of Richard M. Nixon," Linda said when the camera returned to the studio. To her credit, she looked only slightly pale.

"Morbo's only regret," Morbo said, "is that someone ELSE will enjoy the honour of destroying this UTTERLY RIDICULOUS world!" He promptly hit a button on his chair and it blasted up off the floor, crashing through the roof and carrying him away on a plume of flame. Linda was left looking frazzled. She looked at the camera, smiled weakly, and gave a half-hysterical laugh.

All across the world, space vessels were launching – fleeing the doomed world as the strange black sphere grew over New New York.

Hermes switched off the television and they all looked glum.

"Those ignorant fools," Farnsworth muttered. "If they think they'll actually be safe offworld then they've got another thing coming – Fry and the Nibblonian are the only ones who know how to stop that thing, and if they fail the creature will be the end of everything."

Most of the team didn't really understand, but they took it on faith. Outside, the sky rumbled, temporarily blotting out the sound of looters on the streets.

"Well, what do we do now?" Amy asked.

"Huh-whaa?" the Professor looked at her in confusion. "Oh my, there's very little we can do. Now that the creature is encased in a field of compressed spacetime nothing can touch it… nothing but an object of extreme power with a connection to spacetime itself… like a thermonuclear wristwatch… or a highly-caffeinated Tree Sloth…"

* * *

The Lance of Fate shimmered with unearthly energy, as its bearer had come to expect it to do.

Fry clutched it close to his chest as he was pulled a breakneck speed through the tubeline toward the city, with the others following closely behind. Their line looped up over the raised arm of the Statue of Liberty and dipped down underwater as it headed toward Manhattan. Fry occasionally caught glimpses of the outbound lines completely overfull with the congested bodies of hapless citizens trying to flee the city. He, Leela, Bender, and Nibbler seemed to be the only ones trying to get in.

When the tube deposited them in the middle of Times Square, Fry stumbled on the pavement and almost impaled himself on the Lance (wondering idly what kind of disastrous cosmic feedback loop that would have caused). He and the others stood looking around at the panic that had gripped the city. Storefronts were smashed open and hovercars were set alight – their smoke adding to the gloom being cast by Onespawn.

"Another day in the life of New New York," Leela muttered. "Sometimes I think the entire population of this city is just a mob-in-waiting."

"But when in Rome…" Bender said, trying to close his chest door over a new model television that was far too large to fit.

On the big holoscreen above the square, the haggard and drawn face of Mayor Poopenmeyer appeared, larger than life.

"New New Yorkers!" he said. "I urge calmness in the face of this threat – come on people! Every alien invasion it's the same thing – you schmucks do more damage than the enemy! Pull it together for the love of…"

The message cut out when a bolt of lightning slammed into the screen, causing it to explode in a shower of sparks. People on the street screamed and increased their terrified looting.

"Great Scot!" Fry said, staring up at the angry sky.

"This is heavy," Bender added, struggling under the weight of the TV.

Leela looked down at Nibbler. "How much worse is this going to get?" she asked, pointing at the sky.

"Much worse," Nibbler replied. "I doubt the city can be saved, even if Fry is able to reach Onespawn. But it is a loss we'll have to accept."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I don't. I won't." She turned to Fry and took him by the hand. "There's something I have to do."

"You're not going off on your own, are you?" Fry asked with a small smirk.

"Not exactly." Leela leaned forward and kissed him. "Don't finish this without me."

"I'll be at the highest point," Fry said, motioning skyward with the Lance." I'll see you there." Leela nodded and then sprinted away at full speed, dodging looters and vaulting over debris. She disappeared from view.

Fry looked up at the swirling maelstrom above. Onespawn was still visible in the centre of dark mass, from which the slender funnels of energized tornadoes now protruded, licking down toward the city. The wind picked up.

Fry headed off, with Bender dutifully following behind and Nibbler scampering up onto his shoulder, toward the tallest building – Momcorp headquarters.

* * *

Every public telephone she came upon had been smashed to pieces by the roving mobs, so Leela ran flat-out all the way to Planet Express, bursting through the door and instantly having to duck beneath Professor Farnsworth's shotgun blast.

"Professor, stop!" Amy said, pulling the weapon away from him. "It's Leela!"

"I don't know any Leelas!" he snapped.

Leela straightened and surveyed the scene – workbenches had been arranged into a crude barrier to defend against the looters. Cubert, Dwight, and LaBarbera were present, as well as the rest of the Planet Express team.

"Leela, what's goin' on?" Hermes said. "Where's that idiot zombie Fry?"

"Saving the Universe," Leela grunted simply. She moved past them all and went to the videophone, punching in a rapid series of numbers and waiting for the connection to be made.

At length, the logo of SewerCom appeared onscreen, to be quickly replaced by the worried faces of Morris and Munda.

"Leela! Thank goodness you're alright!" Munda said. "We were so worried, what with all those terrible sounds coming from above… what in the world is happening?"

"I don't have a lot of time to explain," Leela replied. "It's all going to hell, and a lot of people may be about to die. We need your help."

"What can we do?" Morris asked.

Leela took a breath. "You want to claim your rightful place on the surface," she stated. "God knows you deserve it, and shouldn't have to earn it or prove yourselves _worthy_. But people are afraid of what they don't understand – it's their nature, it always has been. Now we have an opportunity in the middle of despair – a chance to show them who you… who _we_ are. We can make a difference – and if we don't all end up dead or cease to exist then maybe things will finally start to change."

Morris and Munda glanced at each other, and nodded.

Then Leela told them what had to be done. She ended the call and stood purposefully, and the rest of the Planet Express crew watched her, waiting.

"You guys had better get to safety," she told them.

"What are you going to do?" Amy asked innocently. "Something masculine and undignified?"

Leela glared. "I'm going to help Fry," she said. "We've got one last-ditch chance to put a stop to this thing. I have to go…"

"Not without _Zoidberg_!" the Decapodian said, raising a pincer.

"I'll go along also," Farnsworth said. "I have a score to settle with that monster."

"Scruffy's gonna get in on this action too," the janitor said, putting aside his pornographic magazine and standing. "Sign me up."

"I'll help! I'm helpful!" Amy said, clapping her hands.

Hermes sighed. "I suppose I'd better go along and make sure occupational health and safety guidelines are adhered to," he said.

Leela stared at the team, words lost beneath a swell of pride. She smiled at them. "You don't have to do this you know," she said.

"Hey." Amy placed a hand on Leela's shoulder and tilted her head to one side. "We're friends, right? Friends stick together."

Leela nodded. "Thanks guys," she said. "Now here's what we need to do…"

* * *

The quantum storm was worsening. Torrents of agitated atmosphere ripped across the city, blowing out windows and tearing antennas from their mountings. People on the streets below were no longer interested in looting – the true nature of their situation had begun to hit home with sheets of unnatural lightning and rampaging twisters that cut through the concrete canyons.

This was something far bigger than the traditional bi-annual alien invasion. Humans, Cygnoids, Neptunians, and sentient fungi alike all began falling to their knees, bile glands, or prehensile locomotion ridges, praying to whichever guiding deity occupied their individual mythologies.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, all around the city strange figures emerged from sewer vents, startling the already-terrified populace. The sewer mutants, acting on Turanga Leela's directive, began herding the people of New New York toward the relative safety of the underground.

"Come on, people!" Dwayne shouted at a wide-eyed group. "You can hide beneath the surface – we'll show you the way!"

"It's the best chance you've got!" Vyolet added, holding open a manhole cover. "Spread the word – everyone can take refuge in the sewers!"

Morris and Munda directed a steady stream of refugees down into the subterranean stormwater system; most didn't even look twice at the malformed mutations now, when they were all poised on the brink of annihilation.

"I hope Leela and Fry know what they're doing," Munda said, casting her single eye skyward to where the dark moon had filled the heavens.

Little Nina, from the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphenarium, and Tinny Tim the disabled child robot both paused to look up at Morris and Munda, who smiled back at the kids in an attempt to not look terrifying.

"Thank you," Nina said nervously.

"Yes, quite," Tinny Tim seconded.

"That's alright, darlings," Munda said. "Go along now, you'll be safer below."

As they hurried away to descend into the sewer vent, the Turangas looked at each other in surprise – perhaps their daughter was right.

* * *

Momcorp headquarters was empty. The building creaked and trembled, with structural damage sustained from Ultima's earlier attack and the cyclonic winds outside conspiring to produce a symphony of eerie groans.

Fry, Bender, and Nibbler made their way up through the deserted building, at last reaching the top floor by elevator. The staircase to the observation deck lay before them.

"Last chance to turn back, you guys," Fry told the other two.

"I will bear witness," Nibbler replied, sitting on Fry's shoulder.

"And I'm not missing the opportunity to rob your corpse when you die in a few minutes," Bender said, heartily clapping Fry on the back. "Like they say – let no part of the carcass go to waste – watch, wallet, fillings…"

"…Okay then," Fry said slowly. Together they ascended the stairs. At the top Fry paused for only a moment before pushing the door open and stepping out into hell…


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Fear and Loathing in NNY

The Universe fell toward Onespawn.

As the city below trembled in fear, time and space collapsed around the gargantuan mutated Brainspawn. And the only force holding reality back from the brink of total obliteration had moronically arrived, like a moth to the flame, at the epicentre – and would soon be destroyed along with the rest of… everything.

Onespawn sensed the Lance of Fate directly below. _Close, but not close enough._ It laughed and extended its coherent electromagnetic field to tap into the ebbing and flowing grid of the Earth's so-called 'Internet' and gather inspiration from works of fiction that had been stored electronically. There was a veritable warehouse of creativity floating through cyberspace – a vast multitude of mental realms uploaded to public domain, available to all and sundry. Onespawn selected a few at random and applied their unique patterns to its flaring, burgeoning surplus of quantum energy…

* * *

A screaming vortex of wind ripped across the top of the Momcorp tower, with lightning stabbing all around. Fry stepped out into the open, braving the gale with Nibbler holding onto his jacket and the Lance at his side.

"Let's do this thing," he said.

"Right behind ya, buddy!" Bender called from his position cowering behind an air-conditioning duct.

"Come on, you slimy fat bastard!" Fry shouted up at Onespawn. "Come on down here and face me!"

In response, a disdainful laugh rolled across the turbulent sky.

"And why would I do that?" Onespawn said. "Why, when I can provide you with a host of playmates from your inane formulaic human literature?" The laughter came again, echoing from the black sphere above.

Waves of reality displacement rippled down around Fry, and the Lance glowed bright, protecting him and Nibbler from the effects.

"Is that all you've got?" Fry shouted in defiance, standing at the edge of infinity with the world ending around him.

"Ah… Fry?" Bender called. "You may wanna watch out…" Fry turned too late, and a very large misshapen fist slammed into him, knocking him and Nibbler across the concrete to fall dangerously close to the edge of the roof.

He groggily picked himself up and recovered the Lance from where it had fallen. Only then did he look at what had hit him. A sound somewhere between a grunt of surprise and a gasp of horror escaped his lips after he'd done a double and triple-take.

Standing before him was a half-naked pallid grey/green figure, more than seven feet tall, complete with horrific stitching all over it and bolts protruding from its neck. It was, without a doubt, the monster from Mary Shelly's _Frankenstein_.

"How hard did I just hit my head?" Fry wondered, gazing at the shambolic figure.

"It's real," Nibbler said from the ground. "Onespawn is pulling fiction into reality, transubstantiating it with real matter and energy…"

"All is fiction!" Onespawn's voice bellowed. "There is no difference!"

As the wind and lightning lashed across the roof, more figures appeared out of thin air. There was Terry Prachett's interpretation of the Grim Reaper with his scythe held at the ready; Captain Hook, from J. M. Barrie's _Peter Pan_ brandished his namesake and a curved cutlass; Bram Stoker's Count Dracula bore inch-long fangs and hissed; and Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian swung a gigantic broadsword over his head and bellowed a deafening battle-cry.

"Oh hell," Fry muttered as the fictional characters advanced on him, swinging their various weapons. Frankenstein's monster reached him first, extending oversized hands and moaning mournfully. Fry stabbed out with the Lance of Fate, and the monster fell apart into individual lumps of harvested cadavers.

"End of the line, Frankenstein," he said.

Dracula darted forward, his cape billowing, in a manner of movement that would be called catlike if he had paused every now and then to spray his scent on things. Instead of that, he leaped with an unearthly hiss at the orange-haired boy with the exposed throat and…

…came to a halt in midair with the Lance sticking through his heart. The count dissolved rapidly into a cloud of dust that was whipped away by the wind.

"You suck," Fry quipped.

With a distinctly pirate-like _yarrr_, Captain Hook swung his cutlass at Fry, forcing the hapless delivery boy to jump back and teeter with his heels hanging over the edge of the building.

"Avast, ye scurvy dog!" came a coarse shout from behind the fictional pirate as a robot fist cracked Captain Hook across the back of the head, knocking off his tricorne hat and sending him sprawling.

The loincloth-garbed Conan the Barbarian rushed at Bender with a battle-cry invoking the favour of Crom. He swung his broadsword towards the robot, but Fry leapt in front and parried the blow with his Lance.

Fry and Bender found themselves standing back-to-back as Conan and the Grim Reaper bore down on them from two sides. Slowly, Frankenstein's monster and Count Dracula had reassembled themselves, and along with Captain Hook they joined the others in a circle closing around the two friends. Nibbler scrambled around Fry and Bender's feet and growled at the approaching literary figures.

"Never thought it'd end like this," Bender said.

"Killed by a bunch of fictional characters?" Fry replied. "No, I didn't see that coming either."

"I always thought we'd be killed by television executives."

Fry glanced at the robot in puzzlement.

"Well, might as well go out with a bang," Bender went on, clenching his metal fists.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Fry replied, hefting the Lance.

Death drew back his scythe, ready to reap his grim harvest…

…when suddenly a series of flaming holes appeared in his robe, exposing bones beneath. Death fell back, and Fry, Bender, and Nibbler all looked up to see Professor Farnsworth sitting in his hovering recliner chair and aiming a large-calibre laser rifle. An ancient, senile, gun-toting guardian angel.

"Mad scientists don't fear the reaper!" the old man shouted angrily, firing another few laser bolts into the robed figure.

"Professor?" Fry said in surprise. He almost lost his head, but a red lobster dropped from the sky wearing a jetpack and caught Conan's swinging sword in his pincers.

"A big implement like that, I'd say you were trying to make up for something, I would," Zoidberg said. "Puny stink-gland, perhaps?" He tightened his claws and the sword blade shattered.

"Doctor Zoidberg?" Fry gasped, blinking in bewilderment at the unlikely saviour.

Captain Hook began slashing at them with his hook, but went down like a weighted treasure chest when the leading edge of a Party/Ironing board struck him in the head. Amy surfed the modified flying board in a tight arc and hovered above, grinning.

"We thought we'd lend a hand," she said.

A moustached individual with a grubby peak cap pulled low over his eyes motored across the top of the building on a hoverbike. He swung a heavy wrench in one hand, smashing it across the faces of Dracula, Conan, Frankenstein, and (accidentally) Zoidberg.

"Who the heck was that guy?" Bender said, watching Scruffy circle around.

Dracula picked himself up and lunged at Fry, only to be brought down by a series of bureaucratically-placed laser blasts. Hermes descended, wearing a jetpack and levelling a pistol.

"No vampirism is permitted in the city without an official permit signed in triplicate by the Attorney General and Mayor," he said.

"You guys…" Fry said, looking around at the members of Planet Express standing or hovering around. "But where's…?"

There came an ear-splitting "_Hiiii-YAH_!" from behind him, and Conan the Barbarian fell past into a crumpled heap, a small dagger clattering from his grasp. Fry smiled and turned to see Leela standing in an Arcturan Kung-Fu stance, with a jetpack strapped to her back.

"Hey there, _Mighty One_," she said with a small grin. "You ready to save the universe?"

"You ready to save it with me?" Fry countered. They both smiled at each other with quiet bravado; both aware of the potential for tragedy looming, and both pushing through the fear because it was the only thing they could do.

The fictional characters began to fade away, melting into nothingness. Fry and Leela stepped closer to each other.

"I love you so much," Fry told her.

"And I love you," Leela replied.

Suddenly, with a tremendous crash, a bolt of turquoise lightning flashed from the sky and slammed down into the concrete between them, throwing them both back with concussive force. Smoke and crackling sparks issued from the impact point and a resonant mocking laugh filled the psychic aether.

"How romantic," Onespawn said. "The Idiot and the Freak – it could be the title of a fairy tale. And you've brought your meddlesome friends along to die with you I see."

The building trembled.

"Laugh all you want," Fry said, glaring up at the giant brain. "But it's our friendship that makes us stronger than you. Alone we're nothing, but together we can't be stopped."

"Stronger than me?" Onespawn repeated incredulously. " Philip J. Fry, you have already lost – you only draw breath because your antics amuse me. But now I think it's time to refer to another work of fiction…"

Reality dysfunction washed over them, and Fry cringed. "Oh lord, what next?"

The trembling in the building increased by an order of magnitude, and cracks began to appear in the concrete. Fry and Leela picked themselves up and glanced around.

"Maybe we should…" Leela trailed off, watching in horror as a huge grotesque tentacle pushed out of a crack in the rooftop and coiled up, writhing around as it was joined by others, all slithering out in ponderous silence until the roof was surrounded by rubbery questing feelers the width of tree trunks.

"A giant squid!" Zoidberg squealed, blasting into the air with his jetpack.

"I… don't think that's a squid," Leela said slowly. A large section of roof lifted and fell away, revealing a huge pulpy head with sinister glowing yellow eyes. A massive dorsal ridge bore the stubs of rudimentary wings, and viciously curved claws emerged from beneath it. The creature looked like the bastard child of an octopus and a dragon.

It was Cthulhu, the 'Great Old One', an ancient evil concocted by the legendary horror writer, H. P. Lovecraft.

"I hate it when the bad guys don't play fair," Fry said, watching a dozen tentacles snaking toward him.

Cthulhu let out an indescribable howl as Farnsworth and Hermes flew around it, firing their weapons into its hideous writhing flesh. Leela began running towards Fry, but was blocked by a mass of tentacles that slammed down in her path. Fry gripped the Lance of Fate in a desperate bid at defending himself against the monstrous evil, but something grabbed him from behind and hefted him up by the armpits.

It was Bender.

"Your time to shine, meatbag," the robot said. "Don't make me any more embarrassed to be your friend." With a whine of servomotors, he extended his arms, lifting Fry up, higher and higher away from the monster, with Nibbler clinging to his shoe.

"Bender!" Fry yelled as the robot's arms continued to extend. Bender was lost from view beneath a swarming mass of tentacles, and the slender metal arms swayed alarmingly.

Suddenly Amy appeared, swooping in on her Party Board to collect Fry and Nibbler on the front. Fry hung over the edge of the contraption to look down at where Cthulhu swiped angrily at Farnsworth, Hermes, and Leela, who flew around it in pestering circled. Of Bender, there was no sign…

…until suddenly a metal arm emerged from the tentacles, enthusiastically burning the creature's flesh with a lit cigar.

"Hold on tight!" Amy told Fry as she angled her board upward. He dragged his eyes away from the scene below and looked up to see Onespawn and the Dark Moon looming as one, filling the sky.

"I can go no further with you," said a small solemn voice near his ear, and Fry turned to glance at Nibbler.

"I thank you," Nibbler went on. "To have frozen you, and used you as we did, the debt can…"

"I wouldn't have had it any other way," Fry said automatically, not really understanding how he could have known, but feeling as if he always had nonetheless.

"Farewell," Nibbler said. "It has been an honour."

"Honour _this_, you intractable fools!" Onespawn bellowed, shooting a bolt of psychoplasma down at them.

"_Gan ni niang_!" Amy swore potently, trying to bank the overloaded Party Board but unable to steer in time. The ball of energy billowed toward them, and the Lance of Fate flared incandescent, its temporal field pulsing. Without thinking, Fry held it aloft, and the psychoplasma seemed to splash against an invisible wall, flowing around the figures perched on the flying board. But they shuddered under the force nonetheless, and the board's antigravs laboured – it wouldn't hold for long.

Zoidberg flew in from one side, the nozzles of his jetpack leaving a white trail.

"Hot potato!" Amy said. "Good luck Fry!" The Decapodian caught him around the waist and yanked him off the board, leaving Amy and Nibbler behind.

"Welcome aboard, passengers – thank you for flying Zoid Air," Zoidberg said as Fry clung to him. Crimson energy bolts flashed down after them, burning a line through the air.

Leela flew past, ascending to a higher altitude, and Fry realized his friends were all following some kind of plan. Even as the explosive plasma blasts drew dangerously close, he couldn't help the wild grin that spread across his face. His friends, his team-mates – the greatest people in the world.

"Go, my friend - fly!" Zoidberg shouted, letting go of Fry. For a moment he was in freefall, and then the rear seat of a hoverbike was beneath him, and he hung on for dear life, the Lance still in his free hand, as Scruffy angled the vehicle upward into the howling wind.

Keep passing the parcel – that was the idea. Change direction, change the carrier, keep the movement unpredictable… and maybe they'd have a chance. Using the janitor's shoulder as support, Fry stood up and watched Hermes fly with his jetpack on an intercept course.

"Scruffy believes in you, kid," Scruffy said. "Kick some temporal lobe!"

Fry flung out his free hand and Hermes caught it, yanking him off the hoverbike and upward at a different angle. Of course, something as massive as Onespawn would likely have some trouble trying to pick off comparatively tiny, fast-moving objects too close to itself. Bigger isn't always better, and is more often a hindrance… so Fry had always told himself in the gym class locker room.

The wind buffeted him and Hermes, and the jetpack whined under the loading. Lightning slashed past them, and energy bolts sizzled through the air.

"Alright, ya lazy, good-for-nothin' freeloader," Hermes said. "Ya better not screw this up… we're countin' on ya, mon." He let go of Fry's arm, and he fell, carried onward by inertia for a short time before dropping into Professor Farnsworth's lap.

"Oh my…" Farnsworth said, increasing his recliner chair's thrust and angling up toward the immense black sphere that now hung only a few hundred feet above.

Psychoplasma stabbed down from Onespawn again, and again the Lance of Fate repelled it, at the cost of velocity and a burning sensation that coursed through Fry's cosmic stigma.

"Well, off you go!" the Professor said, and Fry found himself whisked suddenly away, with strong-yet-soft hands gripping him beneath the arms.

Without even turning his head he knew it was Leela. The contours of her body pressed against him; the hint of her subtle scent, recognisable to him even in the rushing wind; her warm breath against his neck…

"It's all or nothing," she said in his ear.

"Nobody can say we didn't give it our best," Fry replied.

"On the plus side," Leela reflected, "if we lose, there'll be nobody around to criticize us for it."

"I hadn't thought about it like that."

Lightning and energy bolts filled their world, and the wind roared. Responding to minute movements in the small muscles of Leela's back, the thrust-vectoring nozzles in the jetpack fought to keep them moving upward. It had come down to it at last: the time-honoured Suicidal Headlong Charge into the Face of Certain Death. Leela stole one hand briefly away from Fry to activate a belt-mounted control box, and then she gripped him even more tightly as an illegal after-market accessory came online.

The pod nestled between the jetpack's two thrust nozzles was designed as a disposable rocket booster for escape capsules. Retrofitted to a jetpack, it gave a massive burst of speed, far beyond design specifications and legal limits for personal flight apparatus.

Fry and Leela shot upwards on a trail of fire.

At any other time, Fry would have whooped in exhilaration, but now the Dark Moon was looming above them like a solid ceiling, and they were closing on it at high speed.

A few pithy and emotional comments filtered through his mind, but the screaming air rushing past his ears, the crash of lighting, and the scant seconds remaining made them pointless.

The Lance glowed.

And the blackness responded, opening before them…

…They flew inside.

* * *

The Planet Express team flew back to Momcorp tower, looking up as the black sphere fluxed and rippled. Cthulhu was gone, vanished into nothingness and leaving Bender only a little dented.

"I hope Fry and Leela will be okay," Amy said needlessly.

The quantum storm seemed to worsen; huge swirling tornadoes slashed across the city, and the Dark Moon expanded, growing down towards them.

"We've done all we can here," Farnsworth said.

"Let's git ourselves below street-level," Scruffy added.

Nibbler watched the pulsing dark mass of reality compression above, and reluctantly took hold of Amy's Party Board as the team left.

New New York began to crumble under the punishment; sections of buildings collapsed, crashing to the streets below; tube lines came down; billboards and suicide booths became deadly missiles in the screaming wind.

But there were no people about.

Deep underground, millions of ears listened to the destruction above. The refugees waited and hoped.


	25. Chapter 24

Chapter 24: I can't believe it's not fiction!

Strange sensations washed over Fry and Leela as they shot up into the field of darkness. Time seemed to slow and distance became difficult to judge. Looking down briefly, Fry saw the city below in smoking ruins, then as pristine untouched forest, and then as a bustling metropolis once again. Windows through history opened and shut like an out-of-order flipbook, and the effect made him look away as nausea threatened.

Onespawn's voice came from somewhere near or far, above or below… it was impossible to tell in the zone of compressing spacetime.

"Get away!" it said. "Get away from me!" For the first time, there was real fear in the creature's psychic bellow.

"I can't tell where it is!" Leela shouted, still holding Fry tightly as gravity faltered and changed direction at random. She used the vectored-thrust nozzles on the jetpack to turn a full circle, and Onespawn suddenly appeared massively before them, and then faded off into an impossible distance.

"Space must be different in here," she observed.

"You mean like the TARDIS?" Fry replied.

"Something like that. At least four dimensions are being broken down here…"

"Stay back!" Onespawn said. "You will not stop me, not now!"

Telekinetic impulses shoved them this way and that, but Leela kept on flying, tracking Onespawn's position even as it seemed to shift around within the uncertain physical laws.

They were still coming. Even despite everything, they were still coming. With faces set in unshakable resolve they were coming… the Lance of Fate held at the ready… still coming.

_Damn them_! Onespawn reached the edge of panic, and in desperation turned once again to fiction from the human world, extending an area of telepathic influence, grabbing at the minds of its two attackers and pulling them in, down through the quantum foam and flotsam of reality and into the realm of fantasy…

…which, after all, really was the same thing.

_

* * *

_Ian Fleming's Goldfinger… 

_A hard bolt of water hit James Bond in the face. The water stung his eyes and filled his mouth. He was on some sort of a table and his wrists and ankles were bound to its edges. He felt with his fingers. He felt polished metal._

_A voice, Onespawn's voice, flat, uninterested, said: "Now we can begin."_

_Bond turned his head towards the voice. His eyes were dazzled by the light. He squeezed them hard and opened them. Onespawn was floating nearby, a miniscule fraction of its previous size. It had unbuttoned a collar that, against all logic, adorned the bottom portion of the brain structure. At the other end of the room, a young orange-haired man and a purple-haired woman with a horrifically enormous single eyeball sat on chairs strapped by their wrists and ankles. They both sat bolt upright, looking shocked._

_A few feet away stood the Korean, Oddjob, still wearing his bowler hat._

_Bond glanced down the table on which he lay spreadeagled. He let his head fall back with a sigh. There was a narrow slit down the centre of the polished steel table. At the far end of the slit, like a foresight framed in the vee of his parted feet, were the glinting teeth of a circular saw._

_"Wait, I know this," Fry said. "But wasn't it supposed to be a laser?"_

_"That was the movie," Leela replied. "This must be the book… the damn thing has us trapped in fiction again."_

_"Mr. Bond," Onespawn said, ignoring Fry and Leela. "The word 'pain' comes from the Latin _poena_ meaning 'penalty' – that which must be paid. You must now pay for the inquisitiveness which your attack on me proves, as I suspected, to be inimical. Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat. This time it will have to kill three cats, for I fear I must count these two animated characters behind me as enemies also. They came here to kill me. Perhaps you did too. You have all failed. Now must come the _poena_." The voice was heavy, bored. "I have had many enemies in my time. I am a very powerful interdimensional being, and power, if I may inflict another of my aphorisms upon you, may not make you friends, but it greatly increases the class and variety of your enemies."_

_"That's very neatly put," Bond said. "You express yourself most vividly."_

_"He doesn't look like Sean Connery," Fry whispered to Leela._

_"Book, not movie," Leela repeated, straining at her bonds. Oddjob had tied them tightly, but the knots were inexpert, the little Korean hampered, perhaps, by his stubby fingers._

_James Bond turned his head. The great pink/grey brain was bent slightly forward. Casually, a tendril of telekinetic energy snaked out to a control panel and pressed down a switch. There came a slow metallic growl from the end of the table on which Bond lay. It curved quickly up to a harsh whine and then to a shrill high whistle that was barely audible._

_"Now then, Mr. Bond," Onespawn's voice was brisk. "Enough of these amiabilities. Tell me everything you know about the so-called 'Lance of Fate' and the decidedly poorly-named 'Mighty One' and you will die quickly and painlessly. The two cartoon people also. Refuse and your death will be one long scream. Which is it to be?"_

_The lever on the table moved across iron teeth. Now Bond could feel the wind of the saw between his knees._

_"You're being a damn fool, Onespawn," Bond said through gritted teeth._

_Leela pumped her fists and felt the knot loosen on her right wrist. Her eye narrowed. She'd never read the book, but she had seen the movie once or twice. If memory served, Fry had made her sit through the obligatory car-chases and chauvinistic overtones. And if it served further, she knew there was an effective cutting tool perched on the head of the little Korean strongman standing nearby. This is, if the film had been true to the novel on that score…_

_She eased her fingers out of the bonds and waited for a moment as Onespawn continued to perform his arch-villain rant at the captive secret agent. Then, in an explosive burst of movement, she shot out her arm and grabbed the bowler hat off Oddjob's head._

_"Don't you know it's rude to wear hats indoors?" she remarked, slamming the brim of the hat against the straps still holding her ankles and left wrist. As anticipated, the felt rim of the hat parted, exposing the slender sharp alloy band that cut through the bindings. She was on her feet in a flash, swiping at Oddjob with the bowler hat as he tried to make a grab at her. The little man was a practiced martial artist, and the rapid kicks he launched at Leela would have been devastating if they'd connected, but she managed to duck and weave, hammering her own boot into his stomach and sending him sprawling._

_"Way to go Leela!" Fry yelled from his chair. She swung around to quickly cut him loose. When they straightened up, Onespawn had vanished and a nearby door hung open, leading out into the Geneva night._

_"We have to follow it," Fry said. "It's the only way out of this stupid stylized spy thriller."_

_Together they headed for the door, but a polite cough made them pause._

_"Er, if you wouldn't mind?" James Bond said, still strapped to the table with the circular saw spinning about an inch away from his crotch._

_Five minutes later Fry and Leela were crammed into Bond's Aston Martin DB Mark III as the secret agent drove the car at blinding speed along the narrow country lanes. Ahead of them in the Aston's headlights, Onespawn flew over hill and dale, trying to evade the pursuers._

_"I'll see that bastard playing his golden harp yet," Bond said, checking his Walther PPK with one hand while steering with the other._

_Suddenly Onespawn vanished over a rise, and Bond drove the Aston up to a sheer cliff face. The three of them climbed out and looked down to see Onespawn descending ponderously toward the inky black sea below._

_"Now I am forever rid of you meddlesome fools!" the creature called up at them. "Let this, the self-indulgent hero fantasy of a woman-hating alcoholic, forever be your tomb!"_

_"Certainly not if I have anything to say about it," James Bond said, levelling his PPK at the brain and snapping off a few quick shots. Onespawn descended faster, fleeing the fictional construct. Fry and Leela glanced at each other, nodded, and together made a running jump over the edge of the cliff and into open space. They fell toward Onespawn and the crashing waves far below…_

_

* * *

_Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles… 

_So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on. "We are going too far," said Sherlock Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before they can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear them coming."_

_A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the orange-haired man and cyclops woman whom we were awaiting. They both looked round themselves in surprise as they emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then they came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As they walked they glanced continually over either shoulder, like two people who are ill at ease._

_"Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!"_

_There was a thin, crisp, continuous humming from somewhere in the heart of that crawling fog bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all four, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Philip Fry and Turanga Leela gave yells of terror and threw themselves face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralysed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A brain it was, an enormous pinkish-grey brain, but not such a brain as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its puckered ridges, its lobes glowed with a smouldering glare, its grotesque shape outlined in flickering blue flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered mind could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that grizzly form and alien will which broke upon us out of the wall of fog._

_With unearthly hovering motion, the huge floating creature was bearing down the track with a furious howl, following hard upon the footsteps of our two friends. So paralysed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave another hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but flew onward. Far away on the path we saw Fry and Leela looking back, their faces white in the moonlight, hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting them down._

_But that cry of pain from the Brain of the Baskervilles had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard screams of anger or fear from Fry and Leela, and the deep roar of the brain. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl Mr. Fry to the ground, and worry at his throat despite the obvious lack of any mouth with which to do so. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious bolt of energy into the air, it rolled upon its back, and then fell limp. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering brain tissue, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant brain was dead._

_Fry and Leela gathered themselves and stood nearby, looking confused. They glanced at myself in unrecognition and then at the detective, seeming at once to find familiarity in his deerstalker cap and calabash pipe._

_"My God!" I whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?"_

_"It's dead, Watson, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost once and forever."_

_"I wouldn't count on that, Sherlock," Mr. Fry muttered._

_"It's a pretty stubborn bastard," Miss Turanga added, and I blinked in surprise at such language from a Lady. She must surely have been delirious with fright._

_All at once, the brain, which we had thought surely deceased, erupted from the ground more rapidly than they eye could follow, and righted itself in the air, hovering nearby to regard the four of us._

_"May you be forever trapped within the unlikely confines of this archetypal detective story!" the creature said in a curiously genderless voice. It began to fly off over the moor, threatening to be lost from view in the driving fog._

_"After it!" Mr. Fry shouted. "We can't let it get away!"_

_Together, the four of us raced off the path and through the boggy hollows and treacherous peat of Dartmoor. Our two friends quickly outpaced Holmes and I, as though they ran with the weight of life itself pressing upon them. As we watched, they followed the brain into a bank of thick fog, and were lost from view…_

_

* * *

_John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men… 

_The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking._

_At about ten o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beams flies shot like rushing stars._

_The wooden latch raised. The door opened, and a floating, oversized brain came in. It was greyish-pink and somehow carried a big push-broom over a non-existent shoulder. Behind it came George, and behind George, Lennie._

_"We was expectin' you last night," the giant brain said. "Was sore as hell when you wasn't here to go out this morning." It pointed with an ethereal tendril of blue energy. "You can have them two beds there," it said, indicating two bunks near the stove._

_Lennie was just finishing making his bed when he noticed out the nearby window a couple of people seemed to walk out of midair out in the dusty yard. One wore a bright red jacket, and the other was a pretty woman with astonishing purple hair and something strange about her face that he couldn't put his finger on. His mouth hung open._

_The giant brain floated about the room with the short quick lunges of arrogance. "I wrote Murray and Ready I wanted two good men this morning," it said. "You got your work slips?" George reached into his pocket and produced the slips and showed them to the brain. "It wasn't Murray and Ready's fault. Says right here on the slip that you was to be here for work this morning."_

_George looked down at his feet. "Bus driver gave us a bum steer," he said. "We hadda walk ten miles. Says we was here when we wasn't. We couldn't get no rides in the morning."_

_The brain used telekinesis to retrieve a time book and opened it where a pencil was stuck between the leaves. George scowled meaningfully at Lennie, and Lennie nodded to show that he understood. The brain readied the pencil. "What's your name?"_

_"George Milton."_

_"And what's yours?"_

_George said: "His name's Lennie Small."_

_The brain tilted its frontal lobe at Lennie. "He ain't much of a talker, is he?"_

_"No he ain't, but he's sure a hell of a good worker. Strong as a bull."_

_Lennie smiled to himself. "Strong as a bull," he repeated._

_George scowled at him, and Lennie dropped his head in shame at having forgotten to stay quiet._

_The brain said suddenly: "Listen, Small!" Lennie raised his head. "What can you do?"_

_In a panic, Lennie looked at George for help. "He can do anything you tell him," said George. "He's a good skinner. He can rassel grain bags, drive a cultivator. He can do anything, just give him a try."_

_The brain turned on George. "Then why don't you let him answer? What you trying to put over?"_

_Just before George could answer, the wooden latch on the door sprung open once again, and the solid door flew back as if it had been kicked, as was the case. Standing in the dusty beam of flyblown sunlight were the two strangers from outside, the man and woman._

_"We heard there was ranching work to be had," the ginger-haired man said, picking up a pitchfork from a wall rack._

_"Yeah, sign us up," the one-eyed woman added._

_The redhead kid hurled the pitchfork through the air, and it sailed straight and true, striking against the floating brain and hanging embedded in flesh for a moment before falling with three runnels of blood to the bare wooden floor. Lennie cried out in sudden horror._

_"Make 'um stop, George!" he wailed._

_"Enough of this crap, Onespawn!" the cyclops woman said, circling around the wounded brain. "Let us out of these musty old stories! How long do you think you can really keep this up?"_

_"Don't bother trying to reason with it, Leela," the man said. "We've done this dance too often." He balled his fists and moved closer._

_"Fight as hard as you want!" the brain said scornfully. "It will make no difference – you may as well perish here in this dreary 1920s tale of hopelessness and loss."_

_The brain rose in the air, and flew through one of the windows._

_The man, who was named Fry, and the woman Leela, both ran from the bunk house in pursuit, leaving George and Lennie alone._

_"George?" Lennie said._

_"I ain't got no answers," George replied, sitting down heavily on the bunk. "Dunno what jus' happened…"_

_A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool._

_A floating brain fled across the top of the pool._

_Two figures paused in their pursuit, before heedlessly leaping into the water. They reached and kicked toward Onespawn… and then both of them vanished unexpectedly, leaving hollows in the warm water that closed over with gentle splashes…_

_

* * *

_

Space, the Final Frontier...

_With a melodic chiming sound, Fry and Leela materialized from sparkling clouds of light and found themselves standing on circular pads in a room that looked suspiciously like it was made from plywood painted to look like a flowing futuristic surface. They glanced around themselves at the tacky surroundings and bulky control consoles._

_"Hey," Fry said. "I know this place… it's the transporter room!"_

_"The what?" Leela asked._

_A muffled giggle caught their attention, and they edged off the transporter pads curiously, peering over the top of the main control console._

_"Oh!" Fry stepped back respectfully, while Leela remained watching for a few moments with a small grin on her face._

_A man with dark burgundy hair was in the process of undressing a busty African-American woman on the floor. He surged to his feet at the intrusion, pulling his golden command shirt back down and glaring at the two strangers._

_"Who the devil are you?" Captain James T. Kirk demanded. __Uhura__ got to her feet, holding her discarded uniform in place to cover her nakedness and staring in horror at the one-eyed woman._

_"Kirk… Uhura?" Fry said, gaping at the pair. "Oh no!" he wailed in anguish._

_"What? What is it?" Leela asked in confusion._

_"Don't you see?" Fry went on, gesturing at the Captain and communications officer. "Now we're trapped in some geek's stupid out-of-character _fan-fiction_!"_

_"Fan-fiction?" Leela repeated in horror. "But that's the worst kind of fiction there is!"_

_"I asked who you were!" Kirk snapped, stepping around the control console to confront the two intruders. "How did you get aboard the Enterprise? Why are you here?"_

_"I don't have time to explain, sir," Fry said. "We're really only passing through – we just need to…"_

_Suddenly the deck beneath them shuddered violently, and red warning lights began to strobe from the wobbling walls._

_"Captain to bridge," a calm, well-rounded voice said over the ship's intercom._

_Kirk was already moving, but he paused as the door slid open, glancing back at Fry and Leela. "You two," he said. "Whoever you are… your presence here now can't… conceivably be coincidence. You'll come with me and explain whatever's happening."_

_Fry and Leela followed him out toward the turbolift, with Uhura hurriedly dressing and moving after them._

_After a short interval, Kirk stepped out onto the bridge of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 with the two strange intruders in tow. A tall man with high-arched eyebrows and elfish pointed ears approached him with hands folded behind his back and began speaking._

_"Captain, we are registering very curious readings from all sensors," Spock said._

_"Specify," Kirk said, moving past to stand behind his command chair._

_"I cannot," Spock replied. "According to our instruments, space itself is literally breaking up. There is no known phenomenon which would account for these readings." The Vulcan glanced at Fry and Leela and raised a quizzical eyebrow._

_"Stowaways," Kirk responded to the unasked question. "Have Bones come up and check them out. I've an inkling they're something to do with whatever force is acting upon the ship."_

_Spock nodded and moved away._

_"Captain!" __Hikaru Sulu called from the helm. "We're losing power in the warp engines!"_

_"How bad?" Kirk demanded stepping around the command chair and pausing theatrically in mid-stride._

_"I can barely read it, but I don't like it."_

_Pavel Chekov looked up in alarm from his readings. "Keptin!" he said. "Visual detection of an object, dead ahead!"_

_"Onscreen!" Kirk shouted, perching himself on his chair in a state of catlike readiness. The main viewscreen came online and resolved into an image of space in front of the ship. In the centre of the image, a large shape shimmered and fluxed, solidifying gradually into a solid mass._

_Fry and Leela exchanged glances. It was a brain. A giant brain that floated in space, surrounded by an ominous blue glow._

_"How 'bout it, Spock?" Kirk said in bewilderment._

_"Fascinating," Spock said. "A moment ago, there was no sensor contact.  
No mass analysis. No trace of radiation. Furthermore, there has been no reading consistent with a decloaking. Whatever that object is, it seems to have appeared… from nowhere."_

_"Everything comes from somewhere, Spock," Kirk said. "It looks like a… a…"_

_"A brain," Spock finished for him._

_"I've never seen anything like it. Is this what's causing the subspace distortions?"_

_"It would seem a logical conclusion."_

_The turbolift hissed open again and a slightly stooped man with a lined face and intense eyes emerged, glanced around the bridge with mild disapproval and fixed on the Captain._

_"What am I, Jim?" he grumbled. "A doctor or a concierge? If I jumped every time a light flashed around here, I'd end up talking to myself. I signed on this ship to practice medicine, not to run up and down at each…" He trailed off when he noticed the giant brain looming in space beyond the ship._

_"What do you make of that, Bones?" Kirk asked without looking at him._

_Doctor Leonard McCoy squinted. "It's a brain," he said simply._

_"I can see that," Kirk replied, swivelling in his chair._

_"Well what d'you want me to say, Jim? I'm a doctor, not a tactical analyst."_

_"Maybe you should have a look at our two unexpected friends there," Kirk said, pointing at Fry and Leela. "They appeared at the same time as that thing out there – and I'd wager there's some connection."_

_McCoy looked at the two strangers, noticing them for the first time, and his gaze was drawn to Leela's eye, at which he gaped in astonishment._

_"Remind me, Spock, never to make fun of your ears again," he muttered, lifting his Tricorder from its strap and waving it over the two people._

_Out in space, the giant brain pulsed, and the ship trembled alarmingly again. Rolling from out of nowhere came a booming laugh that made the whole crew freeze in sudden shock. It hadn't come from the communications system, but inside their own minds._

_"What in the world…?" Uhura said, looking frightened._

_"Toil pointlessly forever under the auspices of fanboy obsession!" the psychic voice bellowed. "Trapped here within the confines of non-canonical obscurity! Hahaha!"_

_"Who is this?" Captain Kirk snapped, leaning forward. "Who's doing this to us… and why?"_

_"It's Onespawn," Fry said, striding forward to stand beside the Captain's chair and pointing out at the monstrosity. "You have to attack it!"_

_"It's planning to destroy the Universe!" Leela added._

_"Destroy the Universe?" Kirk repeated._

_"Possible, sir," said Spock. "The time-space distortions we are measuring are potentially on par with the effect we experienced when we encountered Lazarus."_

_"Seems these pair of kids are generating a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale," McCoy said, staring at his Tricorder. "Obviously it isn't what I was looking for, but there are definite temporal fluctuations surrounding the both of them."_

_Kirk stared hard at Fry and Leela for a long moment before finally reaching a decision. "Alright, I'll see where this goes" he said. "Uhura, open a channel." When she had done so he spoke in a firm authoritarian tone: "I address the alien intelligence whose energy pulses are affecting this area of space. I am Captain James Kirk of the united spaceship _Enterprise_, calling on you to immediately cease your…"_

_"It's firing, sir!" Sulu said suddenly. Crimson globules of energy had burst from the brain and shot toward the ship._

_"Evasive!" Kirk snapped. "Aft shields to maximum!"_

_The ship shuddered as bolts of psychoplasma splashed explosively against it. Consoles erupted in sparks because they always do._

_"Fire all phaser banks!" Fry shouted, and Kirk looked up at him irritably. "Sorry, sir…" he added sheepishly._

_"Do what he said," the Captain grunted._

_Beams of light stabbed from the underside of the _Enterprise's _main saucer section, cutting into Onespawn's flesh. The creature let out a psychic roar and began to withdraw from the area, angling toward a small planet nearby._

_"A photon torpedo!" Fry shouted, overcome by excitement. "Let's finish it off!"_

_"Aye, Captain whoever-the-hell-you-are," Kirk muttered sardonically. The inter-ship communication system chimed and Kirk keyed it in. "Scotty, report," he said._

_"Those impacts took a lot outta our shields," the Scottish engineer replied from the bowels of the ship. "We simply haven't got the power to take any more big hits like that. It we try it, the whole dilithium array's gonna go kerplooey!"_

_"Thank you, Mr. Scott."_

_"Captain, the creature appears to be going to ground," Spock observed. Onespawn was making planetfall on the little unnamed world._

_"We have to follow it," Leela said._

_"Alright then," Kirk said, getting to his feet. "Mr. Spock, Bones, you two come with me. We're going down to that planet along with our new friends here, and we'll see what's what. Mr. Sulu, you have the helm."_

_As the five of them headed toward the turbolift, Fry looked around in mild confusion. "Where's the red-shirt?" he asked._

_"Pardon?" Kirk stared at him._

_"Oh, you know… the ensign. There's always a red-shirt ensign that goes with you guys on away missions who gets killed. Every time."_

_"Er, son?" McCoy pointed at Fry's jacket. He looked down at the bright red garment._

_"Ah crap," Fry muttered._

_Down on the planet surface, Onespawn had carved out a huge crater. It lay smoking, an enormous mass of grotesque tissue. It was hurt. Nearby, five figures materialized out of thin air and stood staring up at it._

_"Good lord," McCoy grunted at the sight._

_"Fascinating," Spock added._

_Kirk had his hand phaser out and held at the ready. "What now?" he said._

_Leela cleared her throat. "Is there any way you can tune your weapons into the same harmonic frequency that Onespawn is generating?" she asked. "So that you could cancel it out?"_

_Spock looked at her in admiration. "An excellent idea, madam," he said. "Most logical."_

_The three Starfleet officers set to work on their phasers, and in a few short moments had them ready._

_"Alright, wide-beam, on my mark," Kirk said when they'd finished._

_"You think this will get us back to reality?" Fry murmured to Leela._

_"Best shot we have," Leela replied._

_Kirk, Spock, and McCoy opened fire, directing three intersecting fields of phased energy at Onespawn. The creature bellowed in pain and fury, and the Universe seemed to ripple and buck, and then drain away into nothingness…_

_…Fry and Leela found themselves hanging poised in an empty void… but then another more familiar fictional world rolled back around them like a welcoming embrace…_

* * *

Instinct or subconscious reaction had locked Leela's arms around Fry's chest, even when both their minds were snatched away. Fry still gripped the Lance of Fate. 

"We're back?" he said, glancing around. They were hovering still within the field of darkness, and Onespawn hung nearby.

"Looks like it," Leela said.

"_No_!" the creature screamed. "It's impossible! You cannot!"

"Time for the thrilling climax," Leela said, angling the jetpack toward the creature. They flew straight and true, with Fry holding the Lance out before them.

The blade shimmered and pulsed…

…and met Onespawn's flesh with a tremendous flash of light…


	26. Chapter 25

Chapter 25: The End of the Beginning

The world stopped.

Light, of the kind that flared at the very first moments of the Universe, was omnipresent. It was old, eldritch light; the light of creation, and of destruction. The Dark Moon above Manhattan had collapsed into a single point of incandescent brilliance that bathed the world in its splendour, and not constrained by any of the Universe's accrued physical laws, the illumination traversed effortlessly through rock and steel, shining down even underground upon the city's less lofty inhabitants and the refugees who sought shelter with them.

The beleaguered population of New New York, crouched in the sewers for protection, looked up in amazement as light surrounded them. Morris and Munda gasped fearfully, worry for their daughter's wellbeing reaching new heights. Bender paused in telling stories to the frightened Cookieville orphans, and Farnsworth forgot for a moment the grief he felt for having lost Mom.

The crew of Planet Express observed the phenomenon with apprehension.

…None but Nibbler could know the full implication. Unnoticed by them all, the little three-eyed creature flickered and then vanished in a flash. Before he went, a smile had spread across his face…

The light continued to illuminate everything, growing in power and seeming to consume all.

For a time, the Universe ceased to exist.

* * *

Three consciousnesses remained intact at the centre of the time-space conflagration: Onespawn, the architect of doom; Turanga Leela, the Other; and Philip J. Fry, the Mighty One.

As the Lance of Fate sliced into Onespawn, temporal energy had flowed through Fry and was channelled by the esoteric matter of the weapon, which then melted away into the nothingness from whence it came, but its awesome power remained. Fry and Onespawn both glowed brightly, and Leela squeezed her eye shut against the glare. It was no good; the light passed right through her eyelid.

"Fry?" she shouted against the roar of each moment in history spinning around them. "What's happening?"

"Everything at once," he replied, floating free of her grasp in the sudden absence of gravity. "And at the same time nothing at all." Leela opened her eye and looked upon him, and her breath caught. Where before had been skin was now only light, brilliant white. It was as if a sunbeam had donned a grubby pair of jeans and a red jacket. The Lance of Fate, finally serving its purpose, had transformed the spontaneously manifested temporal paradox, Philip Fry, into an avatar of the continuum.

"I can see everything, Leela," said the being she could now only think of as _Uber-Fr_y. "Every point in time and space revolves around us right here and now. I can touch it all… I can do anything…"

"What… what are you saying?" Leela asked desperately. "Are you a God?"

"I have no idea what I am," Fry replied, looking at his glowing white hands. "Maybe this is what it really means to be the Mighty One… Nibbler never told me…"

A terrible sound crashed over them, above the screaming energies of the time-space collapse. It was a long piteous cry that reverberated through the aether. Onespawn, massive and shrouded in light, writhed nearby, with vast tracts of its pseudoflesh dissolving and seeming to be drawn away in swirling vortexes of matter rapidly transforming to energy. The last of the Brainspawn race was being recombined back to its origin point.

"No!" the creature bellowed as its quantum field buckled. "I cannot end! I cannot!"

Fry turned in the empty screaming bubble of light that encased them, and regarded Onespawn.

"It's over," he said.

"I don't want to die!" the creature said, with the psychic projection of its voice conveying a pitiful whimper. "I don't want to lose myself… _I don't want to die_!"

"You won't!" Fry said. "You won't die. Nothing ever dies… we all just change into something else… It'll all be okay… you'll see. You will live…"

Onespawn's mass dwindled as more and more of it was stripped away into the quantum recombination. With the last remaining vestiges of its psyche, it posed a question to Fry.

"Why would you fight so hard for a Universe where your fate is not your own… where everything you know is an abstraction?"

Fry hung poised at the centre of everything and looked at the creature as it rapidly faded away; the question left him with nothing to say. "I…I don't know," he admitted at last. The giant brain vanished, and from the point of its departure a wave of nothingness radiated out, quantum backlash erupting like ripples in a pond. Fry and Leela were enveloped by the rushing front of unreality, and their awareness of all physicality ended.

Two minds were adrift in the sea of non-existence.

Katey Sagal's well-rounded voice echoed through the void. "Fry?" she said fearfully.

"Leela?" replied one of Billy West's varied voices, a thin nasally one.

"Where are we?" Katey asked.

"Nowhere," Billy said. "And I think the better question would be – _who_ are we?"

"I'm scared Fry…"

"Don't be. We'll see our way through this. We always do… together."

"I want to touch you… I can't feel anything."

"Hmm." There was a flicker in the dark, like a match struck on a moonless night. "Let's see what I can do about that," said Billy West.

Reality began to cascade around the two minds as if a floodgate had been opened. In six seconds, the Mighty One created the heavens and the Earth, and saw that it was good…

* * *

The sound of a whistling kettle found its way into Leela's dream, and she turned over, burying her face into the soft pillows. It was warm and comfortable, and the noise of someone moving about in the kitchen of the cosy one-bedroom apartment evoked a sense of contentment in her, even as she dozed lightly.

_Wait, what?_ An edge of confusion undercut that contentment, and she roused at last, opening her eye and looking around the homely little bedroom with its high window where ornamental keepsakes sat on the sill in the morning light.

It appeared familiar, and oddly she seemed to remember the history of each item. The chipped old wardrobe they'd found at a yard sale… while the dresser had once belonged to Fry's mother…

_Fry_? She looked at the bedside table and saw their wedding photo as if she'd looked at it a million times before, the lines of both their faces etched into her brain. She surged upright in the bed as a disorienting sense of unreality shot through her.

_Wasn't I just… somewhere else?_

Fry pushed through the door suddenly, wearing a dressing gown and carrying a tray with mugs of ground coffee and a pile of blackened toast.

"Goooodmorning, my love," he said extravagantly, with a wide grin.

"Hey baby…" Leela said uncertainly. "You made breakfast?"

"I _burnt_ breakfast," Fry clarified, setting the tray down beside her. "But the coffee's drinkable." He crunched a piece of the burnt toast between his teeth with a grimace and rolled back into bed beside her.

Leela sipped her coffee and looked around. There was something troubling. She was happy, but at the same time an inexplicable concern lurked beneath the shadow of consciousness. Grasping it was like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

"I think I had a strange dream," she said. "But I don't remember what it was about…"

"It's alright," Fry murmured quietly. "It's finished now. We don't have to think about it again."

"We?" Leela frowned at him.

Fry leaned across and kissed her on the neck, and she sighed, relaxing against him. "We're still going to Coney Island with your parents today, right?" he said.

"My parents?" Leela looked confused. "But how…?"

Just then, a scruffy-looking brown dog scampered in and leaped up onto the bed, trotting around and wagging his tail happily.

"Hey there, Seymour," Fry said, scratching the mutt behind the ear.

"Fry, get him off the bed," Leela said automatically. "I told you I don't like finding his hair all over the blanket…" She paused. "…Did I?"

"Okay, okay," Fry said, shooing the dog away. "I'm gonna shower and get ready." He kissed her on the lips, and she returned the kiss, wondering why it felt so amazing to be able to do so without fear or guilt – after all, she'd done it a million times before… hadn't she?

When he was gone, she looked at the gold band on her ring finger, and tried to remember back to their wedding day. They had been wed, she knew that… but exact details were difficult to pin down…

It was as if everything that had happened in her life before waking up that morning was obscured by a heavy mist. Only vague shapes were discernible.

"What's going on?" she asked herself.

When Fry and Leela left the apartment later that morning, Leela paused for a moment on the stoop looking around in wonder at the quaint brownstone buildings of Georgetown, Brooklyn, and antique wheeled vehicles that lined the streets. There were no flying ships or tube-lines marring the brilliant blue sky, and not a single owl could be seen – instead there were birds she recognised as the long-extinct pigeon perched on the building's concrete façade.

"We're in the twentieth century?" she said in confusion.

"1995, or there about," Fry replied. "I'd have gone for the height of culture and style – 1982 – but I couldn't remember enough to put it all together."

"_What_?" Leela looked hard at him.

"Come on, let's go and see if Bender's fixed the old 'Mighty One' yet. I bet he'll find some way to charge us an arm and a leg."

"Bender?" Leela looked bewildered, but went along with Fry as he sauntered along the footpath. The summer sun had begun to increase in strength, and on a street-corner a group of children played beneath a fan of water from an opened fire hydrant. They laughed and jumped about, and waved happily at Fry and Leela as the couple walked past.

_That isn't right…_ Leela looked back at them. None were gasping in horror, throwing up, or pulling faces at her back. Her prominent mutation had gone completely unnoticed. She opened her mouth to ask Fry about it, but he appeared blissfully happy, so she stayed silent.

On the next street was BS Mechanical Workshop, with the B and S standing for Bender and Scruffy. Since Scruffy seldom did any work, and Bender never paid him, it was really a one robot operation. A robot… in the twentieth century… bound to be an oddity, but like Leela's eye he had failed to draw attention.

"Hey, I fixed up the oil leak and rear suspension problem on the Mighty One," Bender said, stepping out of the garage section with a grease-rag in his hand and a grubby bandanna wrapped around his head. "One of the pistons was misfiring as well, so I took care of it. That'll only triple the price. You keep running that old beast, it's gonna put my kids through college."

"You have kids?" Leela said in shock.

"Well, by kids, I of course mean my gambling and alcoholism," the robot replied. "And by 'put through college' I mean 'pay up now or I'll sell your bike for scrap'."

Fry paid the robot, and Leela walked into the garage. Her mouth fell open in amazement. A pristine, beautifully-preserved 1939 Norton 500 motorcycle stood gleaming in the middle of the workshop. She walked around the ancient machine, trailing a hand over the chrome and leatherwork.

"This is ours?" she said in wonder.

"It's yours," Fry replied, strolling over and handing her a helmet and leather jacket. "I'm just a passenger."

"Fry…" She looked at him. "Philip… is all of this… _real_?"

"I don't know, Leela," he replied. "You'd have to find a definition before I could answer that. What's real?"

Memory bubbled up inside Leela's mind, fleeting and uncertain; a giant brain… a blazing figure of light. "Did you… did you do something?" she asked him. "Did you _make_ this place?"

"I did." Fry nodded. "Memory and dreams made solid – the best of every world. Come on, let's go for a ride."

In a daze, Leela donned her helmet and jacket and got on the bike. Fry climbed up behind her, holding onto her waist. She kick-started the old beast and they motored noisily out of the garage and away down the street. Golden sunlight bathed the city, and people on the street smiled for no reason. Now that she knew, Leela realized the sanitized and over-polished nature of the world around her – glowing bright with friendliness and goodwill.

She sighed and gunned the old Norton up through Kensington and into one of the entrances of Prospect Park. She turned onto the grass and switched off the old bike, sitting for a moment and gazing at the rolling meadow. After a time, she kicked the stand down and climbed off, walking away for a short distance. Fry strolled behind her silently, giving her time to think.

At last she turned to him, looking earnest. "This is just another fiction, isn't it?" she said. "As wonderful as it is here… as beautiful as this life seems, it's no different from those books…"

"But I'm the writer now," Fry said, thumbing his chest. "And this is no less real than our own world."

"Whatever our world is, Fry, it's _ours_."

"And it's brutal and unfair, Santa Claus is homicidal, people die, and giant brains try to destroy everything." Fry sighed and gestured at the verdant fields of the park. "Here we can have everything we ever wanted – my family is here, alive, your parents live aboveground… there aren't any alien invasions or disasters… and I have my Delta wave – I'm smart now. We can live 'happily ever after', in the time and space beyond the words '_the end_', beyond the influence of any force but our own will – for eternity if we want, there's no time here eating at us, making us wither away… no Nielsen Ratings undermining us. We can stay like this forever…"

"Forever?" Leela repeated, gently taking hold of his arm. "What good is eternity if we don't have _today_? You can't make life what you want it to be by simply throwing it all away and building something unreal from your imagination. That's not what life is – the mountaineer doesn't conquer the mountain by blowing it up. Life is what you make from what's been given – sure, it's hard and rough and sometimes not everything goes the way we want it to, but that's all part of it. We keep moving forward, and we do it together."

Fry stared at her for a long time, his face unreadable. "And what if Onespawn was right?" he asked finally. "What if we're just puppets?"

"You really believe that?" Leela asked with a little smirk.

"Do you?"

"No, but would it matter? Maybe the puppeteers are having their own strings pulled as well. Do we care? What difference does it make to a puppet to know the world is a stage? The world is what we have, it's what we know. The world makes us, we don't make it – we just live in it because it's a part of us."

"You'd give up paradise?" Fry asked her. "You'd prefer the grime and the toil?"

"_Our_ grime. _Our_ toil." Leela leaned close to him, smiling sweetly. "I wouldn't give it up for all the antique motorcycles in the world."

Fry watched her, and a smile slowly spread across his face, then he was laughing hard, with tears streaming down his cheeks. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, spinning around.

"I love you so much Leela," he said. "You're the Other alright. I guess this was your role – to persuade me, to make me see the light. You did – you're right. Thank you." He held her by the shoulders and looked into her glistening eye.

"What happens now?" she asked him.

"Now I put things back the way they were," Fry said. "That's _my_ role – what Nibbler knew I'd do, with your gentle push." He drew her close and kissed her. When they broke apart, Leela noticed that the parkland around them was quickly fading to white, all colour and detail bleaching away.

"So I'll see you… on the other side?" she asked.

Fry looked uncertain for a moment. "I hope so," he said. "Not really sure how this is gonna go. It won't be easy – a lot of damage was done, and it'll take a lot to set things right again."

Leela was suddenly frightened. "Fry, what are you saying?" she asked.

His eyes began to glow. "Putting it all back together is easy in theory," he said. "I'm a difficulty though, because technically I shouldn't exist – temporal paradox and all. I have no place in time, so returning me to the timestream is like trying to staple one page from a book into the middle of another book and making it seem like it fits in the story…"

"But Fry…!" Leela gasped desperately. "I didn't know… please, you can't…"

"It's okay," he said. Now they stood alone in blank whiteness, Fry becoming intangible slowly. "The present is a point too small to hit, so I'll aim for the past."

"What do you mean?" Leela said, reaching for him. Her hands passed straight through.

"Go to the place where we first met," Fry said, his voice sounding distant. "If I can… I'll meet you there again."

"Wait!" Leela called, but he was gone. The whiteness pressed down upon her and then exploded outward. Time and space abruptly inflated back into existence…

_Futurama_ returned from hiatus…

* * *

…and with a crackling boom the quantum conflagration above New New York collapsed on itself in a blinding flash and vanished – Onespawn and the Dark Moon had gone. The sky over the damaged city was suddenly clear, and a lone figure floated down as gently as a feather on the breeze toward the top of Momcorp tower.

Unseen energies lay the sleeping form of Turanga Leela down upon the ground that had somehow been scattered with rose petals. She opened her eye and looked up into the azure sky.

"Fry?" she said uncertainly, sitting up and glancing around. There was nothing to answer her but the small eddies of wind that swirled around the top of the building. She looked up, willing him to appear, but knowing he would not. Tears began streaming from her eye.

"It isn't fair," she murmured to herself.

"What is fair and what is right are seldom alike," said a strange voice from behind her. It was deep, yet melodious, rich and full. She turned around to see, where before there had been nothing, a strange creature floating above the concrete with no apparent means of levitation. It was pale green, with slender limbs and a long tail. Its oversized head bore three eyes that glowed like emeralds. There was a sense of serenity radiating from it; a _rightness_.

Leela knew what it was instinctively.

"Nibbler?" she said.

"No longer," the creature replied. "What was sundered and undone is now whole. The two made one. Brainspawn and Nibblonian together, coherent. We now realize the full potential of our nature…"

"What about Fry?" Leela asked tearfully.

"He is not here. Not yet," the BrainNibbler said. "But hold him to your heart and await. He is part of you, as we are all part of each other." The creature began to ascend into the air, and suddenly there were thousands more of the same. The BrainNibblers floated up into the sky; unified, majestic. Godlike.

"We thank you," said the being that had once been Nibbler and Onespawn. "The life and love of beautiful beings such as humanity gives us hope. Live in the light of truth and forever aspire to be all you can. Farewell."

As Leela watched, the beings vanished into the sky, toward whatever strange destiny awaited them. She was left standing alone, hugging herself against the chill wind.


	27. Epilogue

Epilogue: All Quiet on the Future Front

The people of New New York emerged gradually from the sewer vents amid rubble and deitrus as dust settled on their city; a sense of numb disbelief tempered by gratitude at their survival. None could fully comprehend the forces that had been at play, but there was an awareness that an event of monumental significance had transpired and their lives were owed to parties unknown.

Although some _were_ known.

The sewer mutants, hesitant in the face of so much unaccustomed exposure, were ushered, blinking in the light, out of the underground by a tide of grateful citizens singing their praises. The bemused sewer-dwellers had no choice but to be drawn along into the impromptu heroes' parade under the brilliant blue sky and blazing sun that most had only glimpsed through the grilles of stormwater drains. In the midst of terror, when darkness threatens, it is often the case that all the lesser fears and flimsy prejudices are shattered and human beings come to realize the only thing of any worth that they have is each other.

Morris and Munda reflected on that as they were hugged and cheered by strangers grateful for the subterranean sanctuary that had been given – staying on the surface would surely have been lethal if the mounds of shattered glass and collapsed facades were anything to go by.

"I guess Leela was right," Morris said as his hand was shaken enthusiastically by a Cygnoid. "Maybe things will be different now."

"A simple act of human decency, that's all it took," Munda said. "Oh Leela… she's so smart… I hope she's okay."

"She's okay," Morris said. "She's a tough one, our girl. Besides, she had Philip with her."

As the mutants were welcomed into the upper world, Dwayne muttered in Vyolet's scaled ear:

"Great, they finally let us into their shining metropolis minutes after it's reduced to a smoking ruin. Big-hearted of them." Despite himself though, a grin had found its way onto the mutant's face and he couldn't get rid of it.

The Planet Express crew, minus Fry and Leela, looked up at the empty sky, and then by unspoken agreement they began pushing through the milling crowds toward Momcorp tower.

"They're probably fine, right?" Bender said with a small edge of panic in his voice. "I mean, not that I care either way, of course, but…" He wrung his hands nervously.

"Of course, Bender," Farnsworth said placatingly. "People caught at the centre of quantum singularities _never_ suffer any ill-effects." He pulled a face at Hermes when the robot looked away, shaking his head and pantomiming a finger across his throat.

Leela sat alone at the top of the half-demolished tower with the wind gently tugging at her hair. Her emotional bank account was overdrawn and confusion reigned. Although her body had been returned feeling totally rejuvenated, all of her injuries and aches miraculously healed, there was still a deeper exhaustion that left her staring blankly into space and trembling slightly.

The others found her like that, and she was only distantly aware of Scruffy putting his jacket around her shoulders and Amy helping her to her feet. Questions were being asked, but Leela tuned them out, trying to think back to the now-hazy details of the bubble universe that Fry had created… What was it that he'd told her?

"What?" she murmured.

"I said – where is Fry?" Zoidberg repeated.

"Fry…" Leela frowned, trying to recall.

"You know," Hermes said. "Spiky carrot-top, grooming habits of a Baboon. Always lustin' after you like a drunken green snake after a garden hose…"

"I know who he is, jackass," she muttered.

"Well, what happened, confound it woman!?" Farnsworth snapped.

"I don't… remember…" Leela said. "There was a motorbike, and Bender was there… and we had a little one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn in the 20th century… but none of it was real, not exactly…"

The others cast meaningful glances at each other.

"I think we should take Leela somewhere where she can lay down," Amy said softly, taking the cyclops woman by the hand and gently leading her away.

* * *

The day wore on.

As the city struggled to pick up the pieces, aid was offered by the Omicronians, whose fleet had appeared ominously above. New New Yorkers found themselves working side-by-side with looming green Omicron soldier caste in clearing debris and putting together makeshift shelters for those left homeless by Onespawn's attack.

As the sun sank toward the horizon, Mayor Poopenmeyer called a conference on the steps of city hall, and he spoke applauding the virtues of strength and determination in the face of adversity. He then extended a hand of friendship to Lrrr (who fidgeted in discomfort beneath the unfamiliar exaltation) and to Dwayne, who stood as representative of the mutant population - now welcomed as full citizens with all the dubious rights and questionable privileges enjoyed by everyone else. They would not be returning to the sewers.

The Planet Express building had fared reasonably well, designed as it was to withstand doomsday weapons. Most of the team went across the street to help the lesbian coven rebuild their front wall, leaving Leela in a light slumber on the couch, watched over by her parents.

Memory flitted through her mind, faulty and uncertain. Fry was gone – but where? Leela whimpered a little in her sleep and turned over. _What was it he'd said_?

Suddenly the words returned to her from out of the mists of unreality, and her eye snapped open.

"The place where we first met!" she said, sitting bolt upright.

"Leela? Are you alright?" Munda said, looking concerned.

"That's where he said he'd be!" Leela got to her feet and started toward the door.

"Who?" Morris called out.

"Fry! I'm going to find Fry!" She raced out, leaving her parents looking at each other in surprise.

Leela raced through the busy, rubble-strewn streets as fast as she could, vaulting over fallen masonry and dodging hoverdollies laden with mortar. Her boots pounded the pavement. She rounded a corner, skidded to a stop, and kicked open the door to Applied Cryogenics.

The building was dim and quiet, with the rows of stasis pods humming away on their centuries-long tasks. Leela walked through her old workplace, looking around.

"Fry?" she called. "Are you here?"

There was no response, and Leela hung her head dejectedly, feeling loneliness creep over her. "Where are you?" she whispered.

Deciding to wait, because it was all she could do, Leela pulled out a folding chair and sat down in the empty room amid the cryogenic tubes, drumming her fingers on her kneecaps.

"He'll come back," she told herself. "He said he would."

Time passed, and Leela's anxiety built. Treacherously, her thoughts began prodding at the possibility that Fry might never return, and though she tried to quell them, they remained stubbornly. After all, hadn't he said that as a temporal paradox he had no place in time?

_Time… that's right…_ Leela stood up suddenly, remembering what he'd told her: _"The present is a point too small to hit, so I'll aim for the past."_

"The past," she said, with realization erupting like a starburst. She raced over to the cryogenic tubes and began checking the frosted glass panels one by one; dismissing each frozen face that didn't belong to the man she sought.

"Come on, Fry," she muttered under her breath, moving along the line of tubes. At length she'd checked them all, and none of them contained Fry. The last in the line held a frozen figure she remembered from her time working at Applied Cryogenics – it was a John Doe, like Fry had been, but with a pair of coveralls on and a baseball cap pulled low over the face so that features couldn't be seen. Years ago there had been idle office chatter about the identity of the man in the last cryo-tube, and now Leela knew who it was… or hoped she did. He had to conceal his face, obviously, as he'd been laying dormant a few spaces up from where an earlier version of himself had also slumbered, and because he and Leela had been to Applied Cryogenics together… recognition could have been disastrous.

Leela checked the timer on the tube. It still had more than five hundred years left, but knowing Fry's grasp of mathematics she ignored that and turned it all the way to zero. The mechanism chimed and a pulse of microwave energy illuminated the cryogenic pod briefly as it defrosted, and its door swung open with a hiss and a cloud of vapour.

"Ugh… just another couple of centuries," a drowsy voice muttered from within the misty tube. The figure inside tried to roll over and go back to cryo-sleep.

"Fry?" Leela said.

"Huh? Leela?" The man looked up, and beneath the hat it was indeed…

"Fry!" Leela pulled him bodily out of the tube and embraced him, squeezing him so tightly it hurt.

"Oh snap! It worked!" Fry said.

"Yeah, it worked," Leela replied breathlessly. "How long were you…?"

"Well, I turned up in about 2500," he said. "Which means… Five thousand years. But the dial only went up to one thousand…"

Leela smiled. "I was afraid for a little while there," she confessed, leaning her forehead against his.

"Sorry about that," Fry said.

"So all this time, ever since we first met, there's actually been another one of you right here…?"

"Yeah. Kinda trippy, huh?"

"Hmm." She stared into his eyes. "Do you still… I mean… are you…?"

"Nope," Fry said. "No more funky powers. It's just me now. Stupid as a box full of stupid. Nothing special at all."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Leela said, pressing her lips against his. They stood that way for a long time, before finally Fry shrugged out of the coveralls, exposing his red and blue outfit, and discarded the baseball cap. He and Leela left the building and walked hand-in-hand into the dusk. Fry looked around at the half-destroyed city and chuckled to himself.

"I see it all turned out okay," he remarked.

"Sure," Leela replied uncertainly. "Although maybe while you had those powers you could have tried to repair some of the damage."

"I dunno," Fry said, gesturing across the street to where a human, a mutant, and an Omicronian worked together to shore up some support struts that held a damaged wall. "I think I like it better like this," he said. "Grime and toil, just like you told me."

Leela looked at the three mortal enemies working side-by-side, and realized he was right. Sometimes the smallest changes required the biggest catalysts.

They wandered through the streets and eventually Bender caught sight of them as they approached Planet Express. He raced over enthusiastically.

"Fry! You're alright!" he said.

"Yeah, it's all over," Fry told him. "Getting about time for the credits to roll, I think."

"What?" Leela looked at him. "_Credits_? Do you mean as in…?"

Fry smirked at her.

"Ha," she said, smiling at her own gullibility. "You almost had me."

-**The End.**


End file.
